


Daring To Love

by AntiKryptonite



Series: Dealing And Daring [2]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Canon Divergence, Developing Relationship, F/M, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23518450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiKryptonite/pseuds/AntiKryptonite
Summary: Belle is not as strong as others (not as brave as she would wish), and so sometimes she does wonder why she loves Rumplestiltskin (why she will not give up on him).But only sometimes.(A companion piece to 'Dealing For Trust')
Relationships: Belle/Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Series: Dealing And Daring [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1692304
Comments: 30
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A long time ago (seriously, SUCH a long time ago), I wrote a story called 'Dealing For Trust,' and posted it. It's one of my favorite things I've ever written, and it ended up being one of my top-received two or three stories. Which is amazing, and I'm still so grateful that so many of you loved the story I had such a good time writing...however, it was also kind of daunting. You see, originally, I had planned on writing a companion piece from Belle's POV, but 'Dealing' got such great reviews and so many kudos and favorites, that I...chickened out? I was afraid to ruin it for everyone and didn't know if a sequel/companion could live up to the first one. 
> 
> However, as established previously, it's been a long time, and reading back through what I'd written, I found that I LIKED it a lot. So, I decided to finish it up and brave sending it out into the world (really, my personal crisis through this story is so fitting to the theme), so here it is. Hopefully, you will all like it as much as 'Dealing,' but if not, feel free to pretend it doesn't exist. Also, this is probably self-evident, but it's best if you read 'Dealing' first to fully understand what's going on in 'Daring.'
> 
> Also, I don't know where she went (I miss you so much!), but roberre beta-ed the first chapter or so that I wrote way back when, and I want to thank her for that and for encouraging me--even if it did take me this long to finish it.
> 
> Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended.

She loves him. It isn’t something she can catalogue or pinpoint, and the reasons are impossible to list in a coherent fashion, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Her love for him is powerful and undeniable and so subtle, weaving through who she is and underlying all her dreams and thoughts and wishes. It is ever-present and quiet and yet it overshadows all of her life, coloring it with gold and brown and vivid red. 

  
Sometimes, very occasionally (when the Queen hurt her, when she forgot what sunlight on skin felt like, when she bled against the sharp edges of his quick, cruel words), she wonders why. Surely a few months as the caretaker of a castle owned by a man who hides himself away behind a forest of layers should not be enough to overpower so much hurt and such invasive uncertainty and years of imprisonment. Yet it does, because she loves him as much now as she did when she turned away from freedom in the wide world to return to him (came back to free him in turn and find freedom in his embrace). 

  
But she is not as strong as others (not as brave as she would wish), and so sometimes she _does_ wonder why she loves him (why she will not give up on him).

  
But only sometimes.

  
True love _is_ powerful. She (who saw evil and scales and disbelief fall back before the onslaught of soft lips) knows this without a doubt. So it is not strange at all that a few months with Rumplestiltskin is more wonderful and life-altering than decades spent in prison cells. Because he is so much _more_ than anyone else, and he hides his good deeds away behind evocative words and sneers full of hidden amusement and a plan he has told no one else (and only hinted at to her). He is Rumplestiltskin (even his name glitters with sly promises and disguised pleasures), and so she loves him (for good or ill), and she cannot bring herself to doubt or question _why_ and _how_ , not while she wanders through the shelves of the library he gave her (without price, without expectation, without hope). Her hands trail across the old and worn spines of more books than she has ever seen, her feet tread between aisles of strangely made bookshelves, her heart thrums loudly in the empty library, and all she can see is him.

  
She throws quick glances to the door and her fingers flutter again and again to her hair. Nervous anticipation beats in her stomach like drums (though these are softer and gentler, less foreboding, than the drums of war that marked the ogres’ long ago triumphs) and time seems to crawl as slowly as the snails she has been thinking of adding (with a fountain) to the decorations.

  
Rumplestiltskin has always liked making sudden and surprising entrances (had giggled at her jumps and starts until she began smiling back at him, and then his laughter turned to soft, wondering smiles), so she is surprised when there is only a quiet tapping at the door to herald his arrival.

  
He is still and tentative, there on the doorstep he himself bequeathed her, and her heart is squeezed and molded by the colliding hope and fear she sees in eyes like dark and smoky honey. He doesn’t speak at first, when he sees her, only looks at her, but she feels beautiful beneath his stare (she does not need a kiss to know he loves her).

  
“You didn’t have to knock,” she says with a smile. “You could have just come in.”

  
“It’s your library,” he says softly, and she feels gratitude and sorrow in equal parts (remembers quiet despair in a mine and unexpected joy in a library, all painted in that dark smoky brown). She is glad to have a place of her own (a place she can use to shut out the rest of the world when it grows too overwhelming, where she can feel safe and protected), but she misses him. The place where he had so briefly been, in a two-story house with a familiar basement (everywhere, in every room, his scent and his feel and his presence), is now filled with an empty ache engraved with his name.

  
“Well, come in, please,” she invites him, her voice overly cheerful to hide the emotions he stirs so easily (simply with a look or a touch or a word; simply by existing).

  
She is nervous and excited and her hands shake as she leaves him to work his magic on the strange devices of this world, helping her prepare the library for opening. He is here, and he has come back to her as she came back to him (willing to try for _her_ ), and she is hopeful and tentative and afraid all at once. Because he is Rumplestiltskin, and he makes her feel more alive and real and beautiful than anyone else can, but he can also hurt her more deeply than any other. Sometimes (in those rare moments when she wonders why she loves him), she thinks it is the contradictions that exist within him that draw her to him, the mysteries he offers even without thinking and the puzzle he is (even, _especially_ , to himself).

  
The library is quiet around them, but it no longer feels empty or waiting. It is full and complete, and Belle lingers in those areas where she can look over her shoulder and see Rumplestiltskin. He is intent on his work, his eyes so focused, every line of his body turned toward his task (she remembers long days and nights of spinning, remembers watching him furtively, captivated by his dedication), and she finds herself sneaking more glimpses of him than of the books in her hands. She wishes she could stand next to him, soak in his presence and his strange form of intent beauty, but he is busy and she does not wish to distract him.

  
Her patience is rewarded when he finally calls her name and gestures her to his side (invites her close in the way he doesn’t seem to realize he always does). She arranges herself very close to him (conscious, always, of the distance between them since lies and leavetakings and libraries) and listens to the rise and fall of his cadenced voice that is at once so new and so familiar as he explains the intricacies of this world’s library database. 

  
He finishes his instructions all too quickly, and she feels these moments slipping away from her, the seconds speeding past, snatching away her stolen moments with him. So she smiles up at him and asks, “Would you like to see what I’ve done with the place?”

  
For an instant, he pauses. She thinks he will decline the invitation, thinks he will find some way to slip back into darkness, but instead he gives a small, warm smile and says, “Yes.”

  
It isn’t effusive or enthusiastic, but his smile says what the words and tone do not (the emotion in the eyes he can’t completely shutter gives him away). Belle feels warm and happy as her nervousness melts away.

  
She hasn’t really changed very much, not yet, but she wants to walk these shelves with him at her side. She wants his scent and his feel and his presence to imbue the interior of this library so that she will see him here when she wanders from aisle to aisle on her own. He could not let her see the world, could not break the town line ( _yet_ ), so he gave her this library with its hundreds of books detailing the places and peoples of this world (granted her wish in the only way he could). Even now, after she has begun to think of this library as _hers_ , when it has become more normal in her thoughts, she cannot help but swallow back thick emotion at this gift of his.

  
Rumplestiltskin follows her silently, listening to her as intently as he focused on the computer, and though he walks behind her, his steps do not lag. He is careful to stay always a foot or two away from her (so far, because she said she didn’t want to see him; so close, because he is as drawn to her as she is to him), and he never looks away from her (even when she points to books or alcoves) and he smiles when she teases him. It is still not the comfortable familiarity they had almost achieved in the Dark Castle, or the tentative joy they’d started to find in his home here, but it is something (something more than the nothing she’d been so afraid they would have by now), so she is happy.

  
When she finishes the tour (when her throat goes dry because his gaze is dark and burning in the shadows), she gathers what remnants of bravery she still has left to her and takes his hand. It is soft and callused and more heated than she would have guessed it to be. “Dinner, then?” she asks softly, afraid that he will not come. He is Rumplestiltskin, after all, and courting (she thinks that is what they are doing, anyway) wasn’t mentioned in any of the legends about him. 

  
He is hurt and lonely, and she had told him (in a moment of weakness and fear, when terror and desperation still sang like lightning in her veins) that she didn’t want to see him, and maybe he will think that she is not worth another try, another chance, another opportunity to be hurt.

  
Because they _can_ hurt and tear and rend at each other’s hearts (she remembers this, too, in those moments when she wonders what it is about him that she loves), so easily, so awfully, and maybe it would be easier and simpler and even wiser to part ways. 

  
But he is here (even after she sent him away and he told her goodbye) and his hand curves around hers so perfectly (even after he sent her away and she walked away) and he is smiling at her (in a way he never smiles at anyone else), and Belle _could_ say goodbye. She could pretend to be strong and call it bravery and tell herself that one day the pain would go away. She could let him go and turn to her library and make friends and try (in vain) to fill the hole his absence would leave in her heart.

  
But she does not want to.

  
She _wants_ to love him. And maybe she could give up, but she will not. Because he is trying, _trying_ so hard for her, and he is all alone, and he did not have to give her a library and offer to help her set up the database she needs. He did not have to smile at her and speak so kindly and look at her with so much longing pouring outward from him. But he does, and so she will try too. She wants to be brave. She wants to be good. So she will love him, and she will go to dinner with him in front of a town who hates him, and she will not let her fears and her (occasional) wonderings separate them.

  
So she smiles and keeps her hand clasped in his when he opens the door for her, and she follows him out into the street (their steps perfectly synced) and to Granny’s.

  
Maybe one day she will regret it. Maybe he never will make the right choices she knows he _can_ make. She (who has been locked up and hurt and used and forgotten) knows that sometimes bad things happen and happy endings don’t always come.

  
But he is Rumplestiltskin, and so he is worth the risk, and she is Belle, so she will be brave and love him no matter what the consequences.

* * *

  
“Thank you, Rumple,” she says when he sets aside his napkin on the remnants of his meal. He does not reach out for her, but he leaves his hand on the table between them (leaves himself open where she can touch him), so she does. She puts her hand in his and curls her fingers over his palm, and she smiles at him and hopes he can see the happiness and the gratitude and the _joy_ in her eyes as easily as he can see terror and desperation in those to whom he offers deals.

  
“Thank you,” he replies, soft and hesitant. His lips twitch crookedly, a broken smile emerging from between the jagged edges of a broken heart. “For coming.” 

  
For second chances, she thinks he means to say, and she wonders if he knows that this is _her_ second chance as much as it is his (after leaving him, after kissing him when she did not know what he wanted, after sneaking away without facing him).

  
“I’m glad I did,” is all she says, because actions speak louder than words and she is here now, with him, her hand clasping his (afraid to let go lest he slip away from her), a smile on her face (because it is impossible to look at Rumplestiltskin without either smiling or staring).

  
For an instant, the tension (of vulnerability, of openness, of sharing her with all the others in this diner) eases in him and his smile’s brokenness is smoothed, healed. Just a little bit, but she has time ( _they_ have time) to soothe his sharp edges and jagged teeth (to calm her fears and restore her confidence in herself).

  
But then the waitress drops their check at the end of the table and the moment is gone.

  
Belle slides from the booth to her feet and busies herself smoothing her skirt while Rumplestiltskin stands, clutching his cane. When he is upright and steady (his pride still intact), she looks up from her skirt and steps to his side. She can feel the stares of everyone else, but they do not frighten her. She is in love, and she is loved, and these things make her strong (make her brave and defiant). Easily, smoothly, she loops her arm through his and clasps her other hand over his suit coat (warmth and pressure and _hope_ in the wondering look he casts her) and walks with him. Unafraid and _proud_ because Rumplestiltskin is hers and she doubts that anyone in that diner (in the world) can claim anything half as precious.

  
The fluttering, aching feeling in the pit of her stomach as her steps match his are a delightful reward all their own, and she cannot stop smiling.

  
He is here, and she is with him, and that makes this night beautiful.

  
He walks her back to the library. Their steps sound in time with one another, a matched rhythm, stars are starting to peek out from behind the cover of darkness, and Belle is content. It is a new feeling, far different from fear and defiance in one cell, from numb blankness in another, from exhilaration and disappointment and apprehension in those first few days of unfamiliar freedom (when every emotion was too strong, threatening to sweep her away). This contentment is quiet and sweet. It fills up hollow places inside her, carries the scent and the heat of Rumplestiltskin beside her into the cold, lonely crevices of her heart.

  
It will not be easy, she knows, loving Rumplestiltskin in a town that fears him (when even her father believes her cursed), but in this moment, she doesn’t care. He came and he took her to dinner and even while he sat there so rigid and distrustful, he smiled at her and listened to her words. That, too (someone _listening_ to her), is new, better even than the contentment she feels as she gazes out at this town that shelters a world.

  
“Belle,” he says, and his voice thrums through her like a pulse. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

  
“Okay,” she says. She can hear the somberness threaded through his voice, and beneath her hand, his arm trembles. She wants honesty from him, of course she does (wants his trust and his heart because she has already given hers to him even if he does not seem to realize it), but for an instant, she wishes he would swallow back whatever he is about to say. She wants to walk through the gathering dusk with her arm tucked into his and just let the rest of the world disappear for a while.

  
But she does not say that (she wants to be brave). Instead, she is silent and listens to his confession.

  
He speaks of the curse he made (and of course he did; she’d already guessed that) and the woman he sold it to. He tells her that he manipulated Regina into becoming the heartless Queen who would cast a curse to destroy a world and gain vengeance. He admits to his crimes as if he is on trial, and Belle knows this is her fault. 

  
He confesses as if she is somehow better than him, as if she can absolve him of his crimes (as if he must confess in order to be worthy of her), and she hates it because she wanted him to be honest—but she never wanted him to feel as if that honesty would drive her away (not when his honesty is what will keep her at his side).

  
“Why are you telling me this?” she asks (though she knows the answer). She feels sick, something twisted and scared in the pit of her stomach.

  
“It’s the truth,” he says quietly, but he isn’t looking at her and his arm is rigid beneath her touch. He is afraid, and he thinks he is a coward, but he stands there and looks at her library in the distance and he lays himself bare for her (expecting revilement and anger and horror).

  
Emotions (so thick and ungainly and all tangled up one in another) surge through her. Happiness that he is trying to trust her. Shock (and pity for a woman who has shown her no kindness) at the confession itself. Pride, because he stands there and does not flee even though she knows he wants to.

  
“Look at me, Rumplestiltskin,” she commands him, and when he turns to meet her eyes, when he faces her full-on, she cannot help but love him. (She could, but she chooses not to.)

  
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, so quietly and hopelessly that she wants to weep (she smiles instead because it is easier that way), wants to reach out and hug him and wipe away every scar and wound and hurt. Except if she did that, he wouldn’t be the Rumplestiltskin she knows, and he wouldn’t need her anymore, and then where would they be?

  
“I know you’ve done bad things, Rumplestiltskin,” she murmurs quietly, because she does know that (cannot deny it anymore). He is the Dark One, and he is centuries old, and he loves without reserve, without question, without compunction, and these things make him infinitely dangerous. “And I know you make deals with desperate people. I can’t say I find it too surprising that you sometimes _make_ them desperate before coming to them with your deal. But like you said,” she continues, wanting to wipe away the terror and the resignation so terribly outlined in smoky brown (hating how small and frail he looks), “she made her own choices, chose her own fate. We all do, and it’s up to us whether we choose to link our fate with yours. Like I did.”

  
She wills him to understand her (to read between the lines), but she does not think he does. Does not think he can see anything but the mercy he craves and fears all at once. He reaches out a trembling hand and touches a finger to her cheek. The gesture is so innocent, so wondering, so _him_ that Belle gasps (feels a tremor shudder through her very soul). 

  
There is gratitude scrawled all across his face, like her signature on one of his ill-fated deals, and she hates it. Hates that he thinks her his judge. Hates that he has placed her so high above him (high up where he cannot attain her, cannot touch her, where she cannot reach out a hand to him and meet him on level ground).

  
But did he put her there? Or did she put herself there?

  
The dusk has turned into night and cold envelops her as she drops her hand from his arm and casts her gaze down to the ground (too ashamed to look at him). “Thank you for dinner,” she whispers into the still air.

  
“Belle,” he says, but nothing more, and it is too much like a plea to comfort her.

  
“Good night, Rumplestiltskin,” she says quickly.

  
She turns away from him. Before, between the shelves of her library (where she has imprinted his image to accompany her in the days when he isn’t there), she imagined (hoped) that this night would end with a kiss, a hug (something to bridge the distance only growing between them). But she will not kiss him, not now, not when it will seem only a benediction. 

  
If _he_ kissed her… But he won’t. He does not feel himself worthy, and that is her fault (that is her nightmare).

  
Weariness floods her body like cloying lead, dragging her down, crowding out the pleasure and fondness she’d felt over hamburgers and iced tea. This is not what she wants, not what she hoped to accomplish with this dinner. The future is spiraling away from her, so fast, so dark, so taunting. 

  
But she does not like being weak (does not want to be helpless again), so she grasps hold of her own fate and turns at the door to look back at him. She could weep (could scream, could fight, could give up) at the sight of him standing there, as still and tentative as he was on her doorstep hours earlier, watching her with a stare as entranced as it is hopeless. She could smile at the pure wonder and longing she reads there in his large, expressive eyes, in the way he tilts his body toward her (in the fact that he reads her eyes and face as avidly as she reads him).

  
“I’ll see you later,” she promises him. 

  
His smile, slight though it is, is enough to drive back the exhaustion and defeat invading her thoughts (enough to make her smile, too). The subtle relaxation of his posture is enough to ease the twisting uncertainty in the pit of her stomach. _He_ is enough to soothe her.

  
So even though the door closes between them, she knows (knows with every particle of her being, every ounce of her faith) that this is not the end (their end). She will not give up on him (on _them_ ). Not again.

* * *

  
A few days later, she wonders if it matters that she decided not to give up. Maybe he decided to end things on his own. Maybe he’s had enough of the young, naïve princess who doesn’t even know how to work a computer. Maybe he’s realized that it is too much trouble to bend himself and walk on eggshells and do his best to ignore the loopholes he has spent long centuries familiarizing himself with.

  
Maybe he’s given up on her.

  
The library is her haven and her shelter, his gift to her (his heart bound up in the things she keeps close to her own heart), but it is lonely, after a while. Too big. Too open. Too empty. The books distract her, but they don’t comfort her. They offer her entertainment and education, but they are devoid of Rumplestiltskin and so they can do no more than hold her attention for brief amounts of time. 

  
She set herself up too high above him. She pushed too hard too fast. She turned him away when she should have simply asked him for a bit of time. 

  
Belle’s heart beats leaden with regret (she should have been braver, courage to match his own in confessing to her) before galloping ahead in fear (will he ever speak to her again? let her see him aside from the brief glimpses she steals of him going in and out of his shop so like the Dark Castle she once called home?). 

  
And then, like magic, like hope, he’s there.

  
His steps are tentative as he broaches the sanctuary he gifted her, his smile unsure, his eyes already resigned to the futility of his visit. (He stood in nearly that same spot and told her he was a coward; she wonders if he’s aware that he lied to her.) He’s never been smooth, not with her, all awkward surprise and clumsy hope and nervous flirting, but his attempt does more to ease her fear than anything any prince or lord or peasant could ever do.

  
Her dark sorcerer. Her manipulative deal-maker. Her shy spinner. All wrapped up together in the man who asks for another chance and nearly leaves without even processing her answer. 

  
He stares down at the book she handed him (the tome she set aside as soon as she saw it, stubbornly hopeful even as her mind teemed with worries she’ll never admit to). 

  
_Guide Through 101 Sandwiches._

  
It should take them a very long time to work their way through the book, Belle thinks with satisfaction. Long enough for him to grow more sure of her (for her to learn all the hidden pitfalls and snares that loving him entails).

  
“I could take an early lunch now,” she offers (her heart in her throat, her palms damp). “I even brought a sandwich with me. We could share it.”

  
“I’d like that,” he says so sincerely, so gratefully, that Belle’s hands shake as she sets out the sandwiches, carrot sticks, and cookies she bagged up that morning. 

  
“Tuna fish,” she says (wishing she had something more clever, more engaging, to say). “I don’t think I ever tasted it in our land.”

  
“You’re not missing much,” he says. “Unless you added pickles?”

  
“Of course.” She can’t help but smile at him, has to bite her lip to keep it from spreading too wide and eager. “Someone told me that condiments are this world’s most powerful magic.”

  
“You’re a much better student than many I’ve suffered,” he says. She’s sure he’s smiling when he begins the comment, but by the end of it, there’s a shadow behind his eyes, a tremor to his hands. 

  
“You’ve had many students?” she asks (curious but casual, something else he’s taught her, a lesson she learned the long, hard way back in the Dark Castle when she was still a caretaker, there to dust away his loneliness). 

  
“I…” He takes a breath. “A few. It took a while before I could find the perfect match to cast the Dark Curse.”

  
He stares at her from under his eyelashes. She doesn’t think he’s even breathing as he waits to see how she will take this reminder of his confession.

  
Stubbornly, Belle pretends obliviousness (she is _not_ his judge). “Well, until you can keep a library properly organized, I don’t see why I should put myself under your tutelage.” She giggles, then, so he won’t convince himself she is serious, and indeed, he relaxes (a strong reaction for such a small exchange; so many secrets hidden there, so easy to trip over and ruin everything). 

  
“Why do you think I asked for a caretaker, little maid?” His smirk is very nearly the one from their old land, enough to set her heart leaping and dancing. “At least dusting the library was one chore you never shirked.”

  
“And tea,” she says quietly. “I always made sure I brought you your tea so I could sit with you.”

  
“Yes.” There’s something tragic (something beautiful) in his expression as he looks at her, stares as if he’s never seen anything like her in all his centuries. Stares as if she could crush his heart with one wrong smile, one judgmental word (one ill-thought out action on a morning filled with frustration at his inability to answer her questions).

  
It is hard, sitting beside him and feeling his disbelief when their hands so much as brush, to smile at him without weeping for all that he has endured and suffered and internalized (until something as simple as human touch brings fear to swirl there alongside shock). It is hard, looking at his heartbreaking hope as she smiles openly (gently) at him, to love him without being afraid of destroying him. 

  
It is hardest of all to watch him (when the sandwich is gone, eaten as slowly as she could possibly drag out a simple lunch) walk away with his cane and his suit and his power, to believe that he will come back to her (that he will _keep_ coming back to her despite the pain always there at the ragged edge of his sweet smiles gifted to her so tentatively). 

  
Hard, but not impossible, she thinks. It is only a challenge, after all, and one she has no intention of failing.

* * *

  
There are more lunches spent cozy together in her library, curled up so near each other (nearer every time, the distance between them shrinking gradually), his voice warm and familiar now, so familiar, so beloved, that it doesn’t surprise her to hear it rather than the higher trill she once dreamed of. There are walks in the evening, no destination in particular but the journey so important, the steps taken in matched synchronization (slightly different in timing, in weight, in balance, but perfectly matched nonetheless) enough to leave her as breathless as if she were once more chasing a yaoguai. There are sandwiches in lunchbags, in picnic baskets, to-go from Granny’s; sandwiches made for her and sandwiches made by her, and Belle cannot remember a single taste of any of them next to the color of Rumplestiltskin’s eyes, the curve of his hand over his cane, the slope of his shoulders (the _important_ things, the details worth noticing and remembering and storing up for long, dreary days when she is deprived of them).

  
Always, when the sandwiches are eaten and the crumbs are swept away, she lets him go (returning a favor from long ago). Always, he comes back to her (mirror reflection of the times she has walked a path in reverse). Belle knows she shouldn’t test him, shouldn’t make him prove himself so devotedly to her over and over again (but he tests her, too, in the shy touches and the tentative invitations, in how close he stands and how long he stays away, so perhaps they are even, their insecurities matched as well as their steps). She knows she should reach out in turn, reassure him that she still wants him (still loves him), but that first step is so hard, so daunting, when every day there are more secrets in his eyes.

  
But then…he confesses those secrets to her. Bit by bit. A secret here, an admission there, a confidence in between. One by one, he drops pieces of his past in bite-sized chunks, always with that fear underlying the eyes he averts from her. Always with that hope he tucks away so very deep down (that hope she breathes in so that she can taste it, can imagine as her own). 

  
And yet, for all that, all the confessions and admissions and confirmations (all the times she does not send him away or turn her back to him or judge him as he so obviously waits for her to do), still he does not tell her about his son.

  
 _Was there a child?_ she asked him once. _Tell me about your son_ , she said again, later, when the future seemed so close and her toes were dangling over a trap so large it swallowed her up and spat her back out only decades later. _Why do you_ need _magic?_ she asked in another world. _Your son_ , she realized in a library with the truth finally, finally, dropped between them like a burden he had no choice but to reclaim as soon as they were parted. 

  
She has asked and she has been patient, but aside from the name ( _Baelfire_ , a name she keeps cradled close in the deepest, most protected part of herself), she still knows nothing of this boy who shares Rumplestiltskin’s heart with her.

  
And it’s okay, she tells herself. It’s fine that he tells her about crimes, sins, dark thoughts, the truth behind his seer abilities, the twisting turns of his enmity with her father. It's enough for now because no matter how many times he walks away from her with his shoulders rounded and his steps heavy, he always walks back to her with a smile curving his lips and a soft, “Hey,” to greet her. 

  
It's okay because trust is a lot. Trust is the hardest thing she could have asked of him—even without his confided account of past betrayals, she’d known that (she suspected when his reaction to a thief was so extreme; she knew when his reaction to her first kiss was enough to drive them both into nearly a lifetime of misery; she is reminded every day, when he watches her, resigned to her eventual betrayal, when he looks so awed and disbelieving when she does not turn on him). 

  
She cannot expect him to break the habit of centuries in only a few weeks. And his son is important to him. She above all knows how deeply, how fiercely, how unreservedly Rumplestiltskin loves, and so it only makes sense to her that his son is the seed, the root, the core, at the very heart of the trickster Dark One, the manipulative deal-maker, the scared man. The secret around which all the others have tangled themselves.

  
And like the seed at her own heart, she cannot forget that the last time she breached walls and dared climb the highest tower in the search of that most elusive and powerful of magics: he drove her away. Pushed her away, locked her up, sent her out—and even when they were reunited, he did what he’d never done so blatantly to her and lied. So he keeps his son tucked safely away, and she keeps a tiny escape route always in the corner of her eye.

  
(She is not nearly as brave as he thinks, her own secret a confession locked up behind high walls, and maybe he is not the only one who must learn trust.)

  
Without the bravery she longs for, the least she can give him is patience. Especially when he makes the wait so worthwhile, each of his small smiles, his quiet (heartfelt) words, the feel of his arrested movement whenever she loops her arm through his and then, an instant later, the way he relaxes into her, as precious to her as his magic is to him.

  
One day, he brings her a picnic basket and coaxes her from the dusty library shelves out into a park where birds wheel through the sky and the sun shines down on them. He reaches out and takes her hand—just for an instant, but oh, such a _sweet_ instant. Belle’s heart is warm as she weaves her fingers through his, her skin alight with pleasure at his nearness, and loving him has never been so easy.

  
“I promised Bae I would give up my power,” he says, so suddenly that Belle is startled into silence. His hand falls away from her. He hunches into himself as the sun passes behind a cloud.

  
Bae. 

  
_Baelfire_.

  
“It was the first deal I made, and I broke it.”

  
This is trust. Trust so great it leaves her breathless and gasping. 

  
This is honesty. Honesty so frightening that her heart pounds like a rabbit’s in her chest.

  
This is everything she’s ever asked of him, everything she’s ever wanted, and suddenly, Belle is so intimidated, so daunted by this overwhelming responsibility, that she trembles in fear. 

  
“He found a portal to a world without magic,” Rumplestiltskin says, so softly she’d almost believe (if she didn’t know him so well) that he hadn’t set up a magical boundary to prevent such dangerous (vulnerable) words from escaping, “where the curse would be gone and we would be safe. I told him I would go, but when the portal roared open like a cyclone, I was too afraid. I let go of his hand.”

  
Belle is speechless. Motionless. _Terrified_. It would be so easy, so heartstoppingly easy, to break his brave, fragile trust. Too easy to react the wrong way to these secrets he places in her small, trembling hands. To say the wrong thing, to wear the wrong expression, to break his heart without even trying (to become nothing more than another line in a long list of betrayals stretching back hundreds of years).

  
But his words have all dried up now, each one so priceless that it must be parceled out from the depths of his soul a syllable at a time. He’s silent, and he’s waiting, and Belle can only say the one thing that matters most.

  
“I’m so sorry,” she says.

  
He lost his son. Centuries and worlds, realms and powers, magic and deals, all of it because of this one moment when his son was torn from him. She thinks of the Dark Castle, so lonely and vast, filled with rooms that never made any sense (toys and clothes and books and spinning wheels and wealth he didn’t need), a storage place for all the components of a home he hoped to one day build. She thinks of the Dark One, so alone and afraid, but frighteningly patient, focused so resolutely on the deals that never seemed to follow any set pattern (babies or cloaks, strands of hair or princess-caretakers, all of it leading somewhere, all of it for the sake, not of power, but of _love_ ). 

“I _let_ him go,” he says again. “My own son.”

  
She loves him (the Dark One cursed beyond his understanding), she loves him (the father who cannot, _will_ not, give up), she loves him (the man so blind to the nobility of intentions that he thinks himself a monster). 

  
His own son. His greatest secret. His highest priority. And it doesn’t matter that Belle knows, suddenly and irrevocably, that she will never be first in his heart, that she cannot be his happy ending when his son is what matters most to him (that she will ever and always love him more than he is free to love her). It doesn’t matter at all next to the gift of this trust. 

  
The greatest gift he (who has given her so much: libraries and freedom and attention and love) has ever given to her.

  
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I’m sorry.”

  
And she suddenly believes that no one has ever said this to him. She doesn’t think anyone has even once reached out a hand in sympathy, in compassion; has bothered to ask him why he hurts, why he deals, why he plans, why he manipulates. And she _knows_ he doesn’t know what to do with such a reaction because he bends, so brittle, under the force of his long-repressed tears. 

  
She’s almost afraid to touch him, thinking he will flinch away, back into his worn shell. But he doesn’t. Instead (like a hug in Sherwood Forest, a touch of the hand in a bequeathed library, a kiss beside the spinning wheel that is _his_ haven), he leans into it instead. Lets her bear his weight and see his tears and understand even a fraction of the pain he carries inside.

  
Belle is fiercely glad there is no one else around, a surging flurry of protectiveness rising up inside her as she curls herself as far around him as possible. It’s so strange to think that people consider him hard and unyielding and merciless, unfeeling, inhuman, _animal_. Here, with his heart clattering against the palm of her hand and his head heavy on her shoulder, she cannot comprehend anyone misjudging him so greatly, not when he daily hands her such treasures, such awful, precious pieces of knowledge he has hoarded and kept to himself for hundreds of years.

  
Not when he weeps at the mere mention of his boy and shatters at the suggestion of any understanding toward his past.

  
“I’m sorry,” she whispers into his hair. ( _I love you_ , her heart whispers to his.) 

  
But much as her heart aches for his pain, she has to dip her head to hide her face against him. Has to secret away her own blinding smile. 

  
_Baelfire_ , she thinks, a secret shared between them. Trust growing and rooting itself deep and steady and strong. 

  
Belle made her choice to love Rumplestiltskin a long time ago (on a pathway leading either toward or away from the Dark Castle; on a pathway leading to a well from which magic was about to pour; in a library with a heart placed at her feet as parting gift), but now she seals it to herself with this secret (this name). With her own joy and with Rumplestiltskin’s tears.

* * *

  
The next time she sees him, he’s perfectly composed save for the tremor of his hands. Belle smiles extra warmly at him and wastes no time in looping her arm through his. (Honesty will never drive her away; the truth may shock her, but it will not change her mind about him.)

  
His smile is soft and tremulous and so wondering that Belle’s heart aches with the power of her love for him.

  
“I have something for you,” he tells her as she tugs him to their favorite reading alcove.

  
“Another story?” she asks, trying (and failing) not to sound too eager.

  
His step checks before he offers her a strained smile. “Not exactly. Here.”

  
Small and bearing a ribbon wrapped meticulously around it, the box looks very like the one that held the key to her library, so she’s not entirely surprised when she opens it to find another set of keys within. Three keys, all looped around a chain of gold so familiar she can’t help but draw a finger down its tingling warmth.

  
“The shop, my house, and my car,” Rumplestiltskin identifies them each with a flourish she suspects is to hide his nervousness (as per usual). “Just in case.”

  
Belle narrows her eyes at him. “In case of what?”

  
“In case of anything,” he says simply. He looks away as he adds, “I have many enemies, Belle, and some of them will see that you matter to me and interpret it the same way Regina did. So…just in case.”

  
“I _matter_ to you?” Belle’s smile erupts from her heart to paint itself across her face. “Is that what we’re calling it now?”

  
Staring at her, Rumplestiltskin raises a finger to trace her smile just as gently (as fondly) as she traced his gold. “Ah, sweetheart,” he whispers. There’s meant to be more to follow the endearment, but Belle catches her breath at the sound of just that one word. 

  
(Once, she thought that maybe he didn’t love her. Once, she despaired of ever seeing him again. Once, she was certain she would die without getting to hear him admit he loves her. Once, she imagined that even if she did free herself and make her way back to him, he would turn her away again.)

  
Belle squeezes the keys so tight their impression brands itself temporarily along her palm and throws herself at Rumplestiltskin. He catches her with a sound of surprise and a strong arm and a warm embrace that grows warmer the longer she leans against him. 

  
“Thank you,” she whispers (and wonders if he knows everything she is thanking him _for_.)

  
“No matter,” he says (and she knows that he doesn’t, that he still sees only mistakes, shouts, shaking, lies, a barred door).

  
“Thank you,” she clarifies, “for letting me in.”

  
“Oh, Belle.” Once more he traces her lips, as if remembering her smile. “I’m not a very strong man. Or a brave one. But I am a selfish one, and I could never keep you out.”

  
Belle hugs him again, holds onto him so much tighter than she does the keys. “Then I’m selfish, too,” she says, “because I could never give you up.”

  
He once brought her to his castle (and together they made it a home) and let her tear down the drapes and rearrange the library catalog (such as it was) and help him chase back the darkness (chased away her loneliness as assiduously as she chased away his). Now, even though she left him, snuck away and repudiated all he offered her, still he wants only to protect her, to provide for her, to offer her a sanctuary from the world that so misjudges them both. 

  
She left their haven once. She won’t do it again.

  
Rumplestiltskin shivers and hugs her tighter (hides his face from her). He doesn’t need to. She knows that he doesn’t believe her (knows that he is selfish with her today because he believes that their time is finite, always counting down), but that’s okay. One day, decades from now, when she is still at his side, he will know that she meant it when she vowed forever.

  
Magic works differently here, but she thinks that if she were to kiss him right now, with this joy in her heart and strength in his embrace, she would drive the beast away from the man forevermore.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

It’s possible, Belle thinks, that she is not as patient as she assumed she was. It’s only a few days since he entrusted Baelfire ( _Bae_ ) to her that she finds herself asking about the boy on which the fate of worlds hang. 

She wanted to let Rumplestiltskin decide to tell her on his own, but her eagerness gets the better of her. All she can see, as she sorts books and learns the database Rumplestiltskin set up for her, is a little boy with amber eyes and a sharp chin. All she can think of, alone in her tiny apartment, trying not to miss Rumplestiltskin too badly, is a young man with Rumplestiltskin’s habit of tilting his head when he has the upper hand. 

_Bae_. The name runs through her mind, through her heart, like a piece of straw transformed into sinuous gold. 

(Belle’s never loved someone even before she met them, but just the sound of Rumplestiltskin saying his boy’s name caused her heart to expand to make room for this new inhabitant.)

And when she asks, Rumplestiltskin answers her. No more evasions. No more half-truths and skilled changes of subject. Just a smile (so painfully mixed of love and hope and terror and guilt and pride, all swirled there to make a potion as strong as True Love). A smile and more trust wrapped up in a few stories of the boy he’s spent twelve or more of her lifetimes searching for.

“I will see him again,” he confides in her, a whisper as they enter her library after a walk through the dusk-shadowed town. “A seer promised me. The Blue Fairy unwittingly confirmed it. And I’ve Seen it.”

“I know you will,” Belle says as she clasps her hands over his on his cane. “You’ll see him again and you’ll make everything right, and even if it’s hard, even if it takes time, he’ll forgive you.”

Rumplestiltskin hangs on her words. She can hear the catch at the back of his throat as he steps closer to her, a small, instinctive move (as if he can’t help but be drawn to the hope she offers him so freely). “You think so?” he asks.

In truth, Belle was just speaking aloud her own hopes. Her wishes. Her imaginings of what the future will look like. She was spinning a nice bedtime story for them both before they part ways to seek their lonely beds. She’s not really sure that she meant Rumplestiltskin to take the words as a promise. 

But why not?

He’s searched for _hundreds_ of years, and he’s _trying_ , and he _loves_ (loves in a way Belle has never seen anyone else love, so unrestrainedly that all hints of self-preservation fall away, so unconditionally that even after lifetimes of hurt, he speaks of Baelfire in the same way someone else might speak of pure light, absolute goodness).

“Of course,” she says confidently, and throws in an encouraging smile for good measure. “How could he _not_ forgive you after everything you’ve done for him?”

A wince and the way his eyes fall away from hers remind her that Rumplestiltskin is not a man who imagines good things before bed (contingency plans, maybe, alternative routes and back-up deals and roundabout paths for when everything turns against him, worries and fears and resignation, but nothing at all to acknowledge his intentionally buried hope). 

“I don’t deserve his forgiveness,” Rumplestiltskin admits. “I won’t expect it of him.”

“But—”

“No.” Rumplestiltskin’s hand twitches under hers. “I have to find him, Belle, and I will. But just so that I can tell him how sorry I am. Just so he knows that he’s not unloved. Anything else…”

“Anything else is what I’ll hope for,” Belle says in a whisper, and she takes an extra step forward (the single step they’ve kept between them ever since she cut short a hug in an underground mine and asked for space). 

(She doesn’t want space anymore.)

Raising on her tiptoes, she tips her head up and kisses him. She does not care that they have been careful and cautious, that they have both become comfortable with slow and gradual, replaying their relationship on a more balanced dynamic. They have kissed only once since she left his house, a quiet kiss dropped from his lips to hers in between chapters read aloud in a quiet lilt, a whisper-soft promise that despite their tentativeness, they _are_ moving back to a closeness she longs for. 

He kissed her then. This time, she kisses him (and maybe this will be their life now, trading kisses back and forth, True Love parceled out between them, shared evenly, a gift that never stops being returned). He kisses her back, and Belle has never felt bolder or braver or more hopeful.

She thinks he feels the same—and he must, because a few days later, he tells her about his wife.

* * *

After all the secrets he’s poured into her hands as carefully, as casually, as if they are the gold thread he magically spins and carelessly drops, Belle’s learned to recognize the signs when he is imparting something that scares him to reveal. After all the moments when she’s realized anew just how easy it would be to destroy this fragile thing they’re building between them, she’s learned how to temper her immediate reactions.

So she’s not lying, after Rumplestiltskin tells her about his wife’s abandonment, when she tells him that this Milah was wrong. And she’s not lying, after he confesses to killing her in a moment of rage and heartbreak (after, Belle can read between the lines, years of stifled resentment), when she tells him that she cannot ( _will not_ ) judge him for a crime committed long before her ancestors were little more than children. And she’s telling the complete and absolute truth, after he so nervously, so earnestly promises that he would never harm her, when she replies that she knows she’s safe with him.

The first time Belle met Rumplestiltskin, he promised safety to everyone she knew and loved. The first time she erred, he waved away her fear with a baffled expression (and then claimed the proof of their first shared smile as his constant table companion, chip and all). The first time she disobeyed him, he punished her by banishing a book from her hands, taking her out to see more of the world than she’d ever seen before, refusing to barter her for information he needed, and then showing mercy to the man she’d released from his castle (and giving her the first of their shared libraries, a grand gesture with excuses too paltry to hide his apology for the single book he’d taken). The first time she really opened up to him with her own secrets and dreams, he let her go of their deal so she could claim those dreams.

Even in this world, all he has done is offer her a home, a library, sanctuary and haven and protection. 

Sitting next to Rumplestiltskin and hearing the tremble in his voice as he promises his protection, Belle has never believed in something more. Let the entire town warn her against him. Let her father try once more to turn her into an empty canvas free of Rumplestiltskin. None of it will make her doubt what she knows is in Rumplestiltskin’s heart.

She wasn’t lying. After asking for honesty from Rumplestiltskin, she can hardly give him less herself. 

But. 

But once he is gone. Once she is alone. Once the darkness closes around her and the loneliness presses in and the doors seem far too impenetrable…well, then, things are not nearly so clear.

Instead of imagining a dozen different variations of Baelfire, Belle can only see a woman’s face. Beautiful and proud, tall and derisive. A woman in peasant’s clothes (Rumplestiltskin keeps the secrets of his human self much more guarded than he does those of the Dark One, but Belle remembers the homespun, patched appearance of Baelfire’s old clothes, the tattered state of the toys he still keeps in his shop) with dark hair and blue eyes. 

She envisions a woman who looks a lot like herself, who dresses in blue and white, who longs to see the world and hates more than anything to be tied down. And even though she no longer trusts mirrors and keeps the one looking glass in her apartment covered, Belle can’t help but squeeze her eyes shut against her reflection, so vivid in the dark and in her imagination.

Rumplestiltskin was married to Milah (and Belle knew he was married, guessed it even before he confirmed it back in the Dark Castle; it shouldn’t strike any pangs through her heart; shouldn’t, yet it does). He probably loved her. And he killed her. Reached out his hand and ripped out her heart and crushed it to dust.

“I love him,” Belle says stubbornly. Her voice sounds tiny and childlike, a paltry defense against the night. “I knew he did terrible things. I’ve _seen_ him do terrible things. But I love him.”

(She wonders what that says about her.)

Belle gets up from the bed and pads over to the window, curls up against its chilly surface and looks out over the street below, down to the tiny corner visible of Rumplestiltskin’s shop. _Mr. Gold_. She sees the name spelled out there, and it eases something inside her. 

Straw isn’t much on its own, flimsy and scratchy and of little value. But under Rumplestiltskin’s touch, it becomes soft, tensile gold, all worth and beauty and glow. Their love ( _True Love_ , it’s been proven beyond all doubt) can turn the past, too, to something so much better. 

It's enough to lull her to sleep, curled up there on a chair beside the window, and the next day, when Rumplestiltskin drops by with a breakfast sandwich for them to share, Belle smiles at him. 

He’s chipped. Flawed and broken and haunted by a past of which she’ll probably never know the whole. But for all that, he’s _hers_. 

So Belle doesn’t hesitate to take his hand, and doesn’t stop herself from kissing his cheek, and she is what she’s always wanted to be.

She is brave.

* * *

Restoring the library is a full-time job and eats up most of Belle’s time. She’s vaguely aware that Storybrooke doesn’t rest easy, that the people are nervous about some threat tied up with Regina. Honestly, she’d worry more if Rumplestiltskin cared, but his efforts are all turned toward the town line, and Belle’s seen him defeat any number of threats sent his way, so she lets the wary whispers pass her by. (Rumplestiltskin has promised her his protection, and though he hasn’t confessed to them, she’s sure that everywhere she has a key to has been bound up in myriad protection spells to ensure no harm can come to her.)

It doesn’t occur to her that everyone else thinks Rumplestiltskin should be as invested in this threat as they are until she spots him across the street from the library. A smile springs to her lips immediately, and she enjoys the bounce in her step as she heads toward him. He hasn’t spotted her yet, caught up in conversation with a tall blonde man she doesn’t know, and Belle allows herself just the tiniest hope that perhaps this is a friend (someone else to care for Rumplestiltskin, to reach out and assure him he is not alone).

She should have known better just from the way Rumplestiltskin is standing, all sharp edges and tight grip on the cane planted solidly between him and the man.

“If this Cora is as dangerous as they’re saying, you should be worried too!”

“Dangerous for you, dearie,” Rumplestiltskin says with a sneer so different to the practiced caper she grew to expect from the Dark One. It gets his point across just as well. “Not for me.”

“You’re not worried about what she’ll do to _you_? I thought you said magic was stronger than science—and Cora’s very good at magic.”

“If you’re afraid, Whale, feel free to go talk to the charming Sheriff. He’s made it clear that he’s in charge now.”

Whale catches Rumplestiltskin’s arm as he begins to turn away—Belle can’t see Rumplestiltskin’s face, doesn’t know what flashes across his face, but an instant later, the man is falling back, one arm clasped behind his back, his expression all open terror.

“ _Don’t_ touch me,” Rumplestiltskin says, so cold, so harsh, as ruthless as the Dark One but with none of the gestures and flourishes she learned to see as the mask they were. (Is this a mask, too? Or is this who he really is when she’s absent and the masks fall away?) “If you still feel attached to that arm, I’d find someone else to harass.”

The bounce in Belle’s step is gone. Her smile has vanished. The man she saw beneath their first kiss has never seemed further away. 

Whale (she remembers a story, told through Rumplestiltskin’s smug smirk, of a severed arm and a plea for magic) scuttles away. Any minute now, Rumplestiltskin will turn and see her. 

See her blanching and trembling, arrested, uncertain (a little girl with none of the hope and the bravery and the spark he expects her to have; a nobody who looks at him the same way everyone else does and thus deserves none of his attention in return; whatever’s left when the hero and the princess and the martyr are gone, leaving only one more mundane mortal in a crowd of mortals he will long outlive). 

Belle swallows back everything but the barest hint of displeasure over the altercation. She makes sure that her hand doesn’t shake as she reaches to touch his shoulder.

“Rumplestiltskin,” she says (in a voice that doesn’t tremble). 

Rumplestiltskin flinches away, whirling on her with brimstone and fire in his eyes, his cane braced between them. “Listen, dearie,” he’s snarling, before he sees her and registers who she is. 

The snarl drains out of him quicker than sands from an hourglass. She watches it happen, the way his face melts from the Dark One into the quiet spinner, a transformation she once saw happen in tangible form beside a spinning wheel. 

“Belle!” he says (guilt, always so much guilt, dripping from her name). 

(She can’t help but wonder when he will get tired of the guilt and the shame and the need he seems to feel to hide and obfuscate and deflect her from huge parts of himself.)

(She can’t help but wonder what she will do if he ever _stops_ hiding.)

He’s aghast, shrinking down to his real height, all his intimidation fled as he searches for words (excuses, justifications, lies in the shape of half-truths). “Hey,” he finally comes up with, and that does bring back a fraction of her smile. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to… If I’d known it was you, I’d never have—”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she says for maybe the dozenth time.

Only…this is the first time she thinks it’s a lie.

If he notices, he ignores it (Rumplestiltskin has always been as good at ignoring what he doesn’t wish to see as she is at wishing away what she doesn’t want to acknowledge). In fact, he softens and reaches out (and he doesn’t do this often, choosing instead to wait for her to touch him, just another in their complementary game of tests and proofs), and Belle refuses to flinch away (refuses to be scared when Rumplestiltskin has always made her brave).

She laces her fingers through his to show him that she welcomes his touch, appreciates his initiative, still chooses him (to prove to herself that she is not afraid, she is not blindsided by this glimpse of the Dark One in the spinner’s face she’s begun taking for granted).

And she _isn’t_ afraid. She refuses to be. If she did not fear him when he was a raging beast who sneered at her tears and made a show of torturing a thief, then why should she fear him now, when the mere sight of her reduces his silver tongue to a single syllable?

She manages to convince herself that she is as bold as one of her beloved characters, as undaunted as he believes her to be, for an entire day.

But then he grants her another confession (still measuring his worth against her reactions; still intent on keeping her atop the pedestal she helped build) as they trail through her quiet library shelving books. And like she knew she eventually would, she missteps.

“Are you sorry?” she asks him.

“I want to be,” he replies, the words nearly dragged out of him.

And Belle, awash in memories of a frightened man falling back before Rumplestiltskin’s coldness, is too eager. Too jubilant. As hopeful as she was when a stranger on the road first called his power a curse. As impulsive as she was when she sat nearly in his lap and scarcely waited to hear his (evasive) answer about his son before she leaned forward, all her love and dreams and hopes bound up in a single move. 

“Change,” he says, and Belle has always thought of the word as a good thing (something different from the same expectations always required of her; something to shake up her status quo as the dutiful daughter and accepting betrothed; something that could make it possible to see the world, to be a hero, to _matter_ ). But in Rumplestiltskin’s mouth, the word is transformed, alchemized into something almost repugnant.

She tries smiling, wanting to banish the strange flicker of defeat washing over him, but all her smile serves to do is make his eyes tighten in anger. 

“I don’t like it when you talk about change,” he says, almost too quickly. A confession, she thinks, but nearly perfunctory (and for all he has been hesitant and careful and timid in sharing his secrets, he has never seemed begrudging before). As if he doesn’t _want_ to confide in her. 

As if she forced it from him somehow.

But…all she did was smile.

So she smiles again. And she asks a question. And he answers (the complete unvarnished truth, a confession wrung from him against his will).

“I can’t be who you want me to be,” he tells her. It’s not the most shocking secret he’s confessed. 

It is the first one she feels like she doesn’t deserve.

She’s not paying enough attention to the conversation. Whatever’s making him confide in her ( _trust_ , her heart insists; _a deal_ , her mind realizes), she should have waited to consider it until later. But it’s too late. With a few more words, questions asked _without_ an accompanying smile, Rumplestiltskin’s setting down his book and walking away. 

It makes her think of the first time they stood together in this library. Of the touch of his finger against her cheek, as delicate as if he tried to resist but couldn’t, as wistful as if he expected it to be the last time he ever touched her. Of the finality in his tone when he said those two words she never wants to hear side by side again ( _Goodbye, Belle_ ). 

He's saying goodbye. 

And, oh, she never before realized just how deep her lies went. She never knew (how could she?) just how scared she could be. The Evil Queen, princes cursed to be flaming monsters, even her father sending a thug to kidnap her and erase all her memories—nothing, _nothing_ , compared to the conflagration erupting inside her heart at the sound of the door closing behind Rumplestiltskin. ( _Again_.)

He looked at her, while she was thinking about smiles and secrets, and for the first time, there was disappointment in those eyes. Disappointment in _her_. 

He thinks she wants to change him, to drive the curse away. 

_Or is this you?_ he asked her during those moments she does her best never to think about. _Is this you being the hero and killing the beast?_

He thinks she doesn’t really love him. 

And she let him walk away thinking that. She didn’t stop him, didn’t invite him for hamburgers, didn’t do anything but watch as he exited her life.

And this time, there are no hamburgers to bring him back to her.

* * *

He doesn’t come back. He doesn’t call her. The fear grows and grows and grows until Belle leaves the sanctuary he gifted her and dares to approach the shop. The shop where she first saw him again (before she knew him). Where he held her tight and gave her clothes that fit perfectly (conjuring up newly restored memories of another haven, another room full of clothes that fit only one person, another store carefully preserved for a future he can’t quite believe will ever be realized). Where she came back to him and saw that chipped cup sitting at his elbow as he spun regular wool.

The shop she hasn’t set foot in since that night. 

Her heart pounds in her chest, her throat, even her fingertips as she pulls the door open (using one of the keys he gifted her, a _just in case_ she never imagined). A bell rings overhead. 

The shop is empty.

She remembers the last time he disappeared after slamming a door between them. She remembers a cold cell she’d all but forgotten and a tea set that appeared on the floor and the frightening emptiness in his eyes as he told her to _go_. She’d known that he loved her, that he was just afraid of her, but it didn’t matter. He still sent her away and she still ended up alone and aching and apart from him, and what if this is just the past repeating itself?

What if he has consigned her to his past (just another secret to eventually gift someone else who dares to reach out to him)? Left her to her sanctuary and the protection spells he wove so ably around her? Given up on her as just a pale replica of the wife he hated so much that he had to turn her heart into a facsimile of what she’d done to his.

Belle can break his heart with no more than a few words. But he breaks her heart through silence. By choosing to withhold his words from her (the endearments and the quiet _heys_ and the secrets he gives her so timidly, so bravely). By deciding she is better off without him and shutting her out (splitting their fates in two).

In only an instant (or in multiple instants, moments building and layering one atop another until the burden of expectation finally broke him), she has disappointed him. She has hurt him (without even meaning to, but that is almost worse) and as she sets her feet in the direction of his house, she is terrified that when he looks at her, when he sees her standing in his doorway, he will see only his long-dead wife. 

She does not want him to change, not really, just wants him to be happy and whole (wants the heartbreak gone from his eyes, wants him to shine with love and happiness and to stop flinching away from good things in anticipation of it being taken away), but maybe she’s never told him that. Maybe he doesn’t know that.

(Maybe she’s been so busy coveting his carefully guarded secrets that she forgot to trade them for something equal in value.)

When he doesn’t answer his front door, she puts his keys away and pads around to the back yard, where the entrance to the basement lies tucked in a dark corner. 

Her fear is so strong she almost cannot breathe as she knocks at the door. She’s fairly certain the key he gave her will open the door, but she doesn’t _want_ to force her way inside his safe spaces. She wants him to _want_ her there (and maybe it’s easier to want adventure; maybe being a hero is so much more attainable than what she really, _truly_ wants: to be loved and to accept that love without flinching).

Her truth is that she is afraid of him (of his ability to shut himself away behind deep, dark walls). Her truth is that she wants to be brave (and he is the only one who’s ever believed she is, given her so many opportunities to be better and stronger and _more_ ). Her truth is that she loves him more than anything else (and the town, her library, her _life_ , is too large, too hollow, too lonely without him). 

The door opens. 

“Belle,” he says (not _dearie,_ not a slammed door; her _name_ ).

“Rumplestiltskin,” she says (because she knows him, she knew him even before he started paying her in secrets).

And he lets her back in.

* * *

“Don’t keep shutting me out,” she begs him after paying back some of the debt she owes him (secrets of her own spilled out at his feet, so many of them bound up in him and what he means to her). 

“I won’t,” he promises, and as easily as that, her fear vanishes. 

Rumplestiltskin is many things, but if there is one thing that is consistent in every story, every dealing, every interaction with him, it is that he keeps his promises. 

And he’s not looking at her with disappointment or fear or blankness. He looks at her (the most ordinary thing in this basement of marvels) as if she is beautiful and wonderful and magical, and she doesn’t ever want to lose that. She could love others—strong men with classic good looks on their side and compassion in their hearts—but none of them would look at her as if she were their entire world (the only world, amidst all the realms he’s visited, that matters). None of them would love her so much that everything else pales in comparison. They would not hold her with trembling hands and kiss her with the desperation of a man who thinks he will never taste her again.

Only Rumplestiltskin does that, and so he is the one she loves.

As hard as that sometimes is, he is always, _always_ worth it.

* * *

It’s difficult to remember that he doesn’t necessarily want to tell her the truths secreted away inside him when every day he gives them to her so carefully, so earnestly (as if he knows that she will protect them as well as he protects her). In fact, she’s so glad that he’s giving her another chance that she forgets about the smiles in the library (or rather, she wishes away the knowledge; there will be time later to face it). 

He takes her to Granny’s and shares dinner with her in public without tensing and growing extra quiet. Belle realized she could fall in love with him the first time he made her laugh, felt herself trip toward the edge when he gave her a library with a flimsy excuse, felt herself teetering when he caught her up in his arms and blinked at her as if she were as radiant as the sunlight, courted the possibilities when she asked him about his son. 

She chose to love him wholeheartedly when she chose to return to him, decided he was worth it when she decided to leave Phillip and Mulan to go back to the Dark Castle, refused to repent of the decision no matter how much Regina mocked her or how painfully the pirate who broke into her cell hit her, and knew the decision was the best one she’d ever made when he turned on a forest footpath and told her he loved her too. 

But sitting across from him at Granny’s while people openly stare and Ruby tries not to hover too obviously and Granny needles him—knowing that he is there simply to make her happy…it’s enough to make her eyes burn (though she blinks the tears away before they can fall, knowing Rumplestiltskin would misunderstand the source of them). Enough to cushion the blow when he tells her that she is the third woman in his life (she never realized how jealous a person she could be).

They walk through the dusk, a well-worn path that Belle can’t actually describe since she always walks it paying more attention to Rumplestiltskin than to her surroundings. 

He tells her that his wife was happy until he came back from war alive (Belle tries not to hate someone she will never know). He tells her that several decades before Belle was born, he taught his magic to a woman that he also offered his heart to, a woman he would have married and had children with, a woman who ripped out her own heart rather than share that life with him (she tries not to imagine what he lived like after that, what he did in retaliation, how he survived when she above all knows how tender, how vulnerable, his heart is).

Belle is silent for a long time (she’s trying not to recall if she smiled at him before he began whispering these secrets to her). 

“Belle?” he asks, a bit nervously. 

But what can she say? She wants to ask more about his wife (wants to ask if Milah looked like her, if he sees Milah in her, if he’s already planning what he will do when _she_ leaves in favor of adventure). She burns to ask about this second woman whose name he can’t even speak (bitter shadows in his eyes and poisonous pain lurking at the corners of his mouth as he ekes out the confession word by word), but he takes her hand without prompting. He smiles at her, so tender and soft and disbelieving, and Belle wants to be brave, but she doesn’t want to ruin this. 

The past is the past, and one day he may tell her more about both these women who’ve left their scars on him, but not tonight. Tonight is for _them_ , for walking together, for secret smiles and soft touches and daring kisses.

“I love you,” she tells him, and snuggles close in order to feel every inch of him melting against her.

(Tonight she will not be brave, but she will be happy, and she deems it a fair trade.)

* * *

“Cora,” he whispers another night, safe in her library with a book shared between their laps. “She only loved my power. My darkness.”

Belle nudges her hand up against his on the open page, gives him privacy by not looking up from black ink. 

“But even the Dark One wasn’t enough for her.” 

“Rumple,” Belle says. She feels so inept, so clumsy, not sure at all what he needs from her, what he wants in return for these secrets. (She feels, suddenly, very nervous, because Cora is the woman everyone in town is afraid of, which means she’s still alive, she could be here, _now_ , another woman who _matters_ to Rumplestiltskin.)

Rumplestiltskin’s hand grips hers, suddenly. “I’m glad,” he says, fierce and defiant and bristling with power so much greater than his magic. “Glad because…if she hadn’t thrown me away, I would never have dealt for you. I would never have known you.”

His eyes are dark, sparking with life and love and light he can’t see (the pupil in the eye of a brilliant light and all he sees is his own darkness, not the illumination he casts), as he stares at her, refusing to look away. This is not a secret he’s reluctant to give. This is a truth he has emblazoned over his very being. 

“Then I’m glad too,” Belle says. “I hate that she hurt you, but I’m so, so glad that you dealt for me.”

The time for being slow and tentative has passed. Belle doesn’t want space, hasn’t wanted it for a long time. On the contrary, she wants all the space between them to vanish. 

The book drops unheeded to the floor, and Rumplestiltskin lets her turn him into her embrace, bends to meet her, and melts into her when she brings her mouth to his. He’s given her the world in four corners and she gave him her heart in two hamburgers and why are they still pretending that this isn’t where they both belong?

_This_ is the world that she’s always longed to see, the depths of it there in his eyes, the breadth of it in his arms wrapping around hers, the heights of it in the feel of his mouth moving over hers as he deepens the kiss, the wonder and mystery of it in that he dares to risk his heart again.

All that he has suffered, all that he has endured, and yet still he took a chance on her. He still tries, even after countless heartbreaks and painful rejections. He still fell in love with her, and how can anything else (any gesture, any mistake, any secret) ever compare to the magnitude of that? 

His capacity for love astonishes her. His trust awes her. His kisses daze her. 

Rumplestiltskin is, Belle thinks, an adventure like no other.

* * *

She tries, tries so hard. Tries with the books of this world she devours and the hours spent dusting shelves and familiarizing herself with this world’s library systems. Tries by chanting Baelfire’s name in her head and picturing a hundred variations of a boy with Rumplestiltskin’s eyes and nose and chin. Tries by finding new ways to spend time with Rumplestiltskin, focusing all her attention on him, _learning_ him.

Everything she tries only makes it worse.

Every book she reads reminds her that she wants to see the world and have adventures. Every time she imagines Bae, she sees him with blue eyes and a small nose and a rounded chin, gifts not from his father but from his mother. And seeing Rumplestiltskin, watching him weave stories for her and spark magic from his every move, she cannot help but picture him young and innocent and in love—and thus, can’t help but picture a woman at his side (can’t help but wonder about the women who, she assumes, saw him in similarly unguarded moments, happy and shy and funny).

It's eating her alive. 

Time, she thinks, to be brave. Even if she doesn’t like the answers, at least they will be out in the open. At least she will know if Rumplestiltskin fears her (and what she might become).

“Did you love her?” she blurts out (the only way she can grab hold of bravery, in this moment, to attack it without giving herself time to retreat). “Your wife. Did you ever love her…before?”

“Why do you ask?” he says after a long moment. 

She should tell him. She knows she should. He’s been brave for her (even if it’s just fulfilling the requirements of some deal). She should be brave for him.

But then he will flinch away. He will think she is afraid of him (and it will take her weeks, maybe months, maybe decades, to convince him otherwise). 

And there is another way to learn what she wants without confessing anything herself…

Before she can think better of it, Belle begins to smile. It’s a deal, and that means if she pays for it, then the answers belong to her. She’s sparing him this way, sidestepping any need to let him know how uneasy she is about the confessions he’s already shared with her. 

But…but if he doesn’t _want_ to tell her, then she doesn’t really want to know. If he doesn’t _choose_ her (choose trust and hope and love), then what point is any of this at all? 

If she’s willing to force information out of him, to take his privacy and his own choices away, then she does not deserve his trust. 

He gives her so much. Always, continually, over and over again, he gives her his heart. He gives her books and freedom and space and kisses and whatever she wants, whenever she wants. All he has kept from her is his secrets, and even that, he ekes out past all the walls and buttresses and moats he’s long since erected around his heart. 

He _does_ trust her. Even if only through a deal—deals are his life-blood and maybe it is the only way he can bring himself to risk the pain of heartbreak again. Who is she to take that away from him (to take advantage of him)? 

Belle looks away, her smile evaporated before it can fully form. (No wonder she reads about heroes rather than lives out adventures). “I just think about her sometimes.”

She didn’t smile, but he answers her anyway (the shame almost deafens her to his answer, so freely given). “I think I could have loved her. But there was very little opportunity.”

“Why?”

(She imagines a day, far away but still too near, when someone asks him about the princess who became his caretaker. _Did you love her?_ they will ask him, and he will say, _Maybe I could have, but she was not who I thought she was._ )

“She wanted to be free to explore the world,” he says. “She did not want to be married, and before that could change, if it would, I went to war. And then she was ashamed, and then there was a baby, and she felt trapped. And…she couldn’t love me so she left.” 

The world shakes around her. She clings to his arm for balance, for stability (for proof that he is still with her, still content to let her hang onto him). 

“But she gave me Bae,” he finally says. “I could have loved her for that if nothing else.”

Then he looks down at her as if he has not just described _her_.

Milah wanted (Belle wants) to see the world. Milah wanted (Belle wants) Rumplestiltskin to be brave, to be the hero she saw (Belle sees) in him. Milah was afraid (Belle is afraid) of being trapped, forced stagnant and stale into a single place, constrained, locked up in the dark, forgotten and neglected.

He tells her that Milah is exactly who she imagined, and Belle is suddenly terrified. She has the same faults and flaws as his wife (the woman who lied and ran away and blamed him and sacrificed her son and her husband for selfish desires), and what if she is fated to hurt Rumplestiltskin in the same way? Already she is contemplating taking advantage of him, forcing him into a corner without even warning him. What if she, too, leaves him one day? What if she sneaks away because she cannot bear to look into his ancient, profoundly hopeful eyes and see that hope burn and die? What if her own desire to be brave means one day betraying him?

“Is that…is that why you let me go when I said I wanted to see the world? Did you think I would leave you anyway?”

(The past tense of her question soothes her; allows her to pretend that the future is safe.)

“You came back,” he says simply.

It isn’t enough. She came back because she loves him, because she never meant to leave him for good (because she couldn’t imagine her life without him).

It isn’t enough, not nearly enough to save him from her. But when she tries to tell him (to _warn_ him), he turns to face her, his silvered hair haloed by light above him.

“I love you, Belle,” he tells her, forcefully, his eyes beacons of light in the darkness, his hand so warm and steady in hers. “You and Bae are the only things I have ever loved. I wouldn’t hurt you, Belle. Never. I promise. I _couldn’t_.”

He has already hurt her more deeply than any other (by sending her away, by lying to her, by walking away), but she has hurt him too. She has made him think that he’s not good enough, and she’s left him, and she’s disappointed him. She’s _already_ hurt him and still he stands here and says, for the first time since she moved out of his home, that he loves her. 

They have given each other their hearts. Deal or no deal, she realizes, that means they can each destroy the other. It comes with love, and she is still afraid that he will leave her behind in his frantic bid to protect her, that he will be able to live without her even though she cannot live without him. 

She is afraid that she will hurt him yet more deeply—but then, he’s afraid of the same thing.

_I decide my own fate_ , she thinks. And she chooses him. 

He chooses _her_.

“I know,” she promises him, and there in his eyes, ringed in light, is her reflection. Fearless. Confident. Brave.

He does not look at her and see Milah. He looks at her and sees _Belle_.

(She is Belle. She is his. She will not walk away from him, never, never, never.)

“I wasn’t worried about that, Rumplestiltskin, really,” she assures him. “I’m not afraid of you, not like that.”

They are both afraid, and always have been. But for the first time, she realizes that it doesn’t matter. Together, they can be brave. Together, they can risk yet more hurt and reap the rewards in the meantime.

Together, they can be better.


	3. Chapter 3

The deal-maker. The Dark One with the silver tongue and threads of gold to make a puppet of anyone who dares to call his name. Before she ever knew him (before the first time she caught sight of him and felt the storyteller inside her incline toward the intrigue dripping from his every word, his slightest move) she knew what he was.

He comes to her, now, without hesitating in the threshold of the library, waiting for specific invitation. He smiles at her, now, without that shadow of wariness waiting for the other shoe to drop. He lets her take his hand and though he still looks awed that she reaches for him, he does not freeze up and stare as if all his centuries have caught up to him.

Instead, he enters the library easily, smiles to see her, says her name and calls her _sweetheart_ and bends to meet her kiss. He invites her back to the places she left so easily (so impulsively) and calls her _my darling Belle_ and touches her as if she is magic made flesh (lets her in close enough to hurt him, again, as she has before, twice-over, and she cannot bear to think there will be a third time, but this is when she must be brave).

If a deal is what he needs to make him confident, then she cannot begrudge him that. 

She doesn’t even know why she’s surprised. A deal is what brought them together the first time. Now a deal will be what binds them together for another _forever_.

“I know they’re not hamburgers, but that’s no reason not to eat them,” Rumplestiltskin says. Tucked away in their little nook (where he dropped a kiss of forgiveness, of reconciliation, so sweetly down on her lips), he is side by side with her, so warm and trusting that Belle cannot (does not want to) chase away the smile playing over her mouth and peeking from her eyes.

“Even if they were as bad as the first meal I cooked for you, the company would still make them wonderful,” she assures him.

His eyes widen, a flair of the showman sneaking out from his quieter counterpart (so many layers, so many facets, and Belle shivers to know there are still mysteries waiting to be uncovered). “Oh, you thought that black char was _cooking_? I wasn’t aware the definition could be applied so loosely.”

He teases her so gently, cautiously (as if afraid she has forgotten how to laugh with him, but how could she? how, when shared humor is the very first thing that drew her to the man beneath the layers of masks?). 

Belle laughs openly and scoots impossibly nearer. “I got better.”

“Better,” he stresses. “Another loose definition.”

Their fingers brush as he passes her a napkin, and his eyes are dark and intent on her, and Belle could stay like this forever. Sometimes it is hard, being with him. Sometimes she feels that she is in a pitched battle with the darkness lurking inside him, a vicious struggle for the soul of Rumplestiltskin (the gentle, loving, funny man leaning his shoulder against hers) and she is afraid (oh, so afraid!) that she will not end the victor. 

But sometimes…sometimes it is easy, infinitely, poignantly easy, to love him. To watch him and smile up at him and find the good in their shared memories that so often remind them only of the bad that came between. To talk of books she’s read and items he’s procured and the places he’s visited and she’s always wanted to see. He says that he’s sorry she never got to see those places (he’s sorry he locked her away), and she smiles and says that she likes listening to his view of them (she doesn’t blame him; she forgives him), and he stares as if she’s performed a miracle.

A deal is a deal is a deal. _Forever_ , she promised, and perhaps he promised truth for a smile (but he could avoid her, could slip away in the cracks and never even risk seeing another smile and having to pay for them, yet he stays; he stays and seeks her out and courts her all the same, even knowing the price). Her family is safe, his secrets are nestled close in her heart, and if she wishes to be as brave as him, then it is time for her to make her own terms (time to trust him with her own bruised and wary heart; time to decide her own fate, linked to the deal-maker’s in threads of gold that ring her finger rather than tie strings to her limbs).

_Forever_ , she thinks, and seals their new deal with a kiss that tastes of remembered char.

* * *

“What deal did you make with Rumplestiltskin?”

She stands in the doorway, open air (freedom) behind her and her father cornered before her (but she knows, can still remember, how quickly that can change), and still she trembles. 

This man once hugged her close and laughed at her excitement when he gifted her a new book. This man once led wars and bore the weight of lives and still chose her over an end to endless death. 

This man looks at her and sees a puppet. A victim. He closes his ears to her words and turns his attention to Rumplestiltskin while plotting ways to erase her choices and sending out thugs to frighten her and force her to compliance. 

The dichotomy of him doesn’t surprise her (Belle’s read enough books to know every character sees themselves as the hero of their own story). What jars her (what hurts her someplace deep and aching) is the lack of remorse in his eyes. The absence of any apology. The complete incomprehension that he has betrayed her.

“Belle!” Maurice says her name with hope. With excitement. But when she doesn’t move from the door (doesn’t give any cause to make him think she’s forgotten what he did), he goes cold and stern once more. “I have nothing to say to that monster.”

“He’s not here,” Belle says evenly. “But I am. What deal did you make with him?”

“You’re the one who made the deal, not I.” Maurice shakes his head, sad and heavy with regret (mourning the girl who loved him so fiercely, refusing to see that she is standing right in front of him). “If I knew how to get you back, believe me, I’d do it.”

She wants it to be him. With every secret Rumplestiltskin shares, Belle has grown more and more careful of her smiles (counting her pennies closely to make sure she doesn’t overspend). But she’s also had time to think on who could force a deal with the Dark One—on who would _bother_ to force a deal on her behalf. And, oh, she _wanted_ it to be her father (to have some proof that he loves her and sees her for who she is).

But deep down, she knew better.

Her father has excised her from his heart. She’s nothing more than a ghost to him now, and worse, a ghost conjured up by Rumplestiltskin.

“You could have had me back,” she says, and if disappointment makes her voice more bitter than she’d usually allow it to be, well, he’s not listening anyway. “All you had to do was accept me.”

“I don’t know what he wants with you,” her father says. He looks at her with an expression she’s never seen directed her way before (he looks at her the way everyone else looks at Rumplestiltskin). It cuts her sharp, sends her reeling back, bleeding into the gathering chill as dark clouds drift across the sun (it makes her understand, suddenly, more of why Rumplestiltskin has developed so many uncaring, aloof masks to combat this). “Why did he take you from me? Why won’t he just let you go like he does everything else? What is he planning to use you for?”

“He loves me,” she says defiantly. “And I love him. Can’t you see that? He’s a good man, Papa. He’s—”

“Enough.” Maurice turns his back on her. “I won’t listen to his words in your mouth anymore. Just leave me be.”

The skies open up to drown her tears. She hates this, crying over something that she already cried over (crying over a hope she knew was too flimsy to be real). More than anything, she wants her papa of old, the one who would gather her close, envelop her in his bulk, keep her safe. 

No. No, that’s not what she wants.

Her library waits for her, comforting smells and familiar routes. Her apartment, so small and cozy and as meticulously crafted for her as every gift Rumplestiltskin has ever given (so many offered with no prices attached at all). They are empty, though, of what matters. 

Belle drifts through the hazing rain, and eventually finds herself standing on his doorstep in the rain.

In her time as caretaker to the Dark One, she saw dozens of beggars come to the Dark Castle and offer their very souls in exchange should he only let them in and help them. She saw Rumplestiltskin turn some of them away without a second thought, and invite the rest in with a giggle and a gleam in his eyes that sparked brighter when he later sent them off without something even more precious than their souls (Rumplestiltskin has never dealt in souls, she knows; but in hearts, in the dreams and the hopes, the intentions and the deeds). 

Waterlogged and trying to breathe between sobs, Belle knows she is as desperate as any of those beggars. But Rumplestiltskin takes only one look at her, and he wraps her in his arms, ushers her inside, solicitous and kind and everything she knows him to be. He offers his shoulder, a handkerchief, blankets, his own lap as a pillow. He strokes her hair with his fingers and whispers in her ear until she stops crying. He offers retribution because he hurts for her and withholds it because he loves her. He soothes the fears her father roused (the tiny niggling doubts that Rumplestiltskin does not truly love her, that she is only a brief diversion in his long life) and tells her she is unique, that he needs her, and she knows that he’s telling the truth because that truth is written across his face whenever he catches sight of her.

He kisses her as if it is the most natural thing in the world, and that leaves her reeling, because he is awkward when she touches him and nervous when she holds his hand and unsure when they walk together and disbelieving when she spends time with him and tense when they are in front of others. But kissing… He kisses her as if she were made for him (and he finally believes it), as if he has been waiting his whole life just for her to be here for him to hold and love (as if immortality was gifted him solely so their lives could intersect). And she has never kissed anyone but him, has kissed him only rarely considering all the time she has known him, but Belle feels such a sense of rightness (as if she is exactly where she is meant to be).

She falls asleep to the sound of his voice whispering in the darkness of his library (opened so willingly to her, another library, another gift of trust), her head pillowed on his lap, his hands caressing her hair. 

When she wakes, she is alone, sunlight spilling in past thick curtains she’d opened when he brought her home from the well, magic crackling all around him and gentleness making his hands tremble (and something in her softens, eases, to know he hasn’t closed the curtains in the intervening weeks). The blanket tucked around her shoulders is warm, and she knows (the way she always knew in the Dark Castle when he’d returned) that he hasn’t gone far.

Following the sounds of life, Belle makes her way to the kitchen. Rumplestiltskin turns with a pitcher of orange juice in his hand (a scene so like another, déjà vu that comforts her because now they have a chance to do this right). When he sees her, he smiles (nervous, unsure, because he remembers how this went the last time she woke without him at her side and he tried to make breakfast for her).

_I need you,_ he told her, a truth so wonderful that it leaves her breathless and trembling even just to think of it (a truth she certainly didn’t pay for with any smiles).

Belle steps up close to him, so close that she can lean her brow against his, her bare feet requiring her to go on tiptoes, his cane providing them both balance. The whisper of his quiet exhale against her cheek makes her eyes flutter. 

Her father is wrong. Everyone in town is wrong. Rumplestiltskin is everything she will ever want, and she would choose to stand in the rain every night if it came down to choosing between leaving him or staying with the monster.

“Thank you,” she murmurs. 

“No matter.” He shrugs and shifts his weight (still so unused to this quiet intimacy that Belle finds so easy to give him). 

Shifting back, she drops a single kiss on his cheek (not nearly enough in payment, but at least a down payment). “It matters a great deal to me.” Her soft smile slides into a smirk. “ _You_ matter to me.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” he says archly, and Belle laughs.

His eyes soften at the sound of it (a laugh for his happiness; that is a deal she would gladly make, and would laugh every moment, every day, if only it would bring this look always to his face). 

“I’m glad you came,” he offers, shyly, his attention seemingly drifting to the orange juice he pours into tall glasses. 

“I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” she confesses in return (her secrets are not as dark as his, not as steeped in anger and machinations, but they are every bit as scary to release into the open). “I’m just sorry that all I did was cry and feel sorry for myself.”

He blinks at her. Without the orange juice to distract him, his fingers rub against the ring he wears, a gesture that Belle recognizes (a nervous tick so familiar it sends fond affection spiraling through her). “You…you trusted me,” he says. “You let me help you. You’re so brave, Belle.”

“Hardly brave,” she scoffs, but he catches her hand in his.

“It’s brave to open up to someone,” he says. “Brave to be vulnerable before them. Yet you do it so easily.”

His admiration is painted all over him. She feels so undeserving. Like a fraud. A liar.

Since the moment she snuck away from his home ( _their_ home, if she’d only accepted it), she’s been the one being cautious. Calculating how much she can give him without fully risking her heart. Easing back into the True Love that had overwhelmed her that first day her memories were returned to her. Since the moment he came to her in their library and told her the most important name in any world, he’s been the one being brave and risking vulnerability and opening himself up to the possibility of heartbreak.

“I trust you,” she tells him (it’s a vow more than a confession). “And I know I haven’t always been very good at showing that, but—”

“I haven’t always deserved it,” he interrupts, so guilty and ashamed. 

Belle reaches up to smooth her hand down his face (wiping away the lines of guilt to replace them with startled delight). “I don’t deserve your trust either. I know I’ve hurt you, Rumplestiltskin. Thank you, for trusting me anyway.”

The moment is charged. If they were still in the Dark Castle, this is when he’d back away with some flimsy excuse, magic himself up a retreat, stay away for hours as he regroups and marshals up enough courage (enough hope) to rejoin her for tea or spinning or anything else he can think of. But they’re here, in Storybrooke, a new beginning. So Belle steps away for him, turns her attention to breakfast (gives them both time to accustom themselves to this new step forward in their burgeoning relationship).

After breakfast filled with mundane conversation (sharp asides from him and sly remarks from her), she thanks him again (wishes he wouldn’t just brush her thanks aside as if he doesn’t deserve them).

“Goodbye,” she says, and Rumplestiltskin flinches. A tiny movement, almost indiscernible if Belle hadn’t long ago learned to look for the subtleties, the tiny details, where Rumplestiltskin is concerned.

“Goodbye,” he says with a forced grimace that he clearly intends to pass off as a smile. He looks at her as if he thinks this farewell is forever (he always greets each farewell as if it’s permanent; she doesn’t think he realizes that some goodbyes are only temporary). 

Belle would give so much to erase that shadow from him, but she thinks that maybe time is all that can do that. She’ll keep coming back to him, keep hugging him goodbye and kissing him hello, until finally, one day, he does not look bereft when she walks away and surprised when she walks back to him. 

One day, she thinks, both of them will think it normal to see the other again, but it will be no less magical for that.

* * *

The days pass into weeks. Rumplestiltskin works his magic and the whispers about Cora die down as the prince’s wife and daughter are restored to him. Belle’s vaguely aware of the happenings around her, listens to Ruby when she talks about her friends and the town, but none of it seems to touch her much. Now that she knows some of Cora’s history with Rumplestiltskin, she can’t deny that she’s glad there’s no way for her to come to this new world (hard enough battling with a curse for Rumplestiltskin; she doesn’t need to also worry about a woman who loves the darkness in him more than the man).

Rumplestiltskin’s attention is fixated on the town line. Belle visits him often with meals, with tea, with desserts, with picnics and stargazing blankets and new books that might have helpful information, and with smiles (not as currency, just as comfort, as encouragement, as tangible proof of her belief in him). It’s freeing, to be able to leave their library and her apartment and slip into his shop, into his home, into his space without fear, without doubt (without guilt). She does her best to make him smile at least once, to reward each of the secrets he gives her with an effort of her own (a smile for a truth for a step forward for another smile, round and round in an unbroken circle she dares to think may never end). Anything to ease his tension, dull his frustration, strengthen his hope.

“You’ll find a way,” she tells him, over and over again (she’s never believed in anything more). “You’ll see Baelfire again.”

She’s sure he’s told himself the same thing more times than either of them can count, but she hopes it helps to hear it in someone else’s voice (to know that he is not alone in his quest anymore).

Every time she leaves, she makes sure to tell him goodbye. Every time she walks through the door to see his smile (easier, wider, more immediate each time), she makes sure to reach out to say hello (to take his hand or kiss him on the cheek or rest her head against his shoulder, _something_ grounding, reaffirming the reality of them both).

Eventually, she grows to hate coming back to her apartment. His shop is so close to the hall in his castle where they once spent so much time growing to know each other; his home is rich with memories of sweet reunions and brave confessions; her library is filled to the brim with nights spent reading, hours spent kissing, meals shared between them. But her apartment…that is empty of him altogether. 

“You’ve been working all day,” she tells him when she finds him sequestered in the back of his shop. His stance, leaned against his worktable with his shoulders hunched up over his ears, alerts her to just how frustrated he is. The smell of ozone, the feel of lightning surging beneath his skin, is just more proof that he needs a break.

“Nothing to show for it,” he says, and it must be bad for him not to even smile at her in greeting. 

Sometimes, when she carried a tray of tea up to his tower, he’d be like this, mind working quickly, endlessly, plots on plans on information on deals on schemes, clicking so rapidly that Belle could all but see the thoughts crowding the air around him. Distracted and intent and only sluggishly coming back to the present.

Now, as then, she slips closer, quiet, assured, easing into his space. 

“You found something else that didn’t work,” she half-says, half-asks. “That means you’re a step closer to finding what _does_ work.”

He tenses, then relaxes, turning smoothly on his good foot to offer her a faint smile. “Belle,” he says, just that, but Belle smiles to know that he is here with her again (she’d never dream of distracting him from his quest to find his son, but she loves that she can give him some form of haven between attempts). 

“Walk me to the library?” she asks. “I looked through those books you gave me, and I might have found something about magical boundaries. I marked the pages for you.”

If she were a painter, she’d waste a thousand canvases trying to capture the way his face melts with something so intense, so poignant, that it makes her chest ache. “Thank you,” he breathes.

“You might already know what it shows,” she cautions him.

“I might not,” he replies. Whether the information is helpful or not, she’s just glad that he’s letting her help, even in such a small way (she thinks he’s equally as grateful that she’s willing to help; she can’t help but wonder if anyone else has ever voluntarily aided him on his long search). 

Looping her arm through his, they stroll down the street to the library. It’s chilly, which delights Belle (it gives her the perfect excuse to snuggle close to Rumplestiltskin’s warmth). She pays no attention to the stares the passersby send their way, and is glad for Rumplestiltskin’s intense focus when he doesn’t seem to notice them either.

Once in the library, it’s a simple matter to show him the book and watch his eyes flick over the relevant pages. “It might help,” he says. “I’ll try it tonight.”

“Have you eaten?” she asks on impulse.

She hasn’t smiled whatever smile it is that he feels compelled to pay for. He hasn’t told her any secrets that make her want to give back to him.

But the evening stretches long and lonely ahead of her. Her apartment is too cold, too big, too empty, without the prospect of Rumplestiltskin there. Besides, he has given her his son’s name, his son’s past, his son’s importance; the least she can do is invite him into every facet of her life too.

(That’s a lie: she’s selfish. So selfish. She wants him in her apartment, wants to make a memory of him there tonight so his specter can keep her company on other evenings when he _can’t_ tear himself away from his work.)

When he realizes where she’s leading him, when he balks, she tugs at his hand. “Come up,” she says. “I have tea. And dinner.”

Another pause (Belle’s bravery falters), then he nods and agrees (her boldness rushes back in).

For the first time, he accompanies her up the steps to the apartment. For the first time, she’s not alone when she comes to her own door. Shaking with excitement, it takes her a few tries to get her key (the key Rumplestiltskin made for her) into the lock.

He's nervous, she can tell, and she has to reassure him a few more times that she wants this (wants _him_ ), but then he’s there, inside her apartment, filling it up, brightening the colors, making everything come alive. Now, whenever she sits on the couch to read until the early hours of the morning, she can look up at that spot of floor and picture him standing there. Whenever she eats a lonely meal by herself, she can imagine the warmth of him at her side, remember the careful way he balances the bowl of soup she gives him and the teacup (not chipped, this one, but they only need one chipped cup between them).

(Now, whenever she feels too helpless, too fragile, too broken, she can remember that Rumplestiltskin looks at her and loves her. She can remember that he was here and may be here again, that he is a part of her life, that she can see him any time she wishes.)

All angles and shadows, straight lines and the glitter of light reflecting in dark eyes, Rumplestiltskin fits into the room in a way that mesmerizes her. He stands out (he always does, no matter where he is, and Belle envies him that), but always he makes a place his own (and Belle loves that her apartment can now be _theirs_ as much as every other place they share). 

“I should go,” he says suddenly, standing and ready to be gone. She’s not ready to lose him again, though, not yet. Not when he still looks so tired and defeated. Not when she misses him so much and _wants_ him here.

She catches his hand and does not care that she begs. “Don’t go, please” she says, and when he tries to dissuade her (tries to warn her about the beast he thinks he is, so careful with her, so dismissive of himself), she tugs at him until he is once more warm and safe next to her. He must find his son, of course he must, and he has been so patient so long that it must (if the world has any fairness in it) happen soon, but she is tired of watching him punish himself. Tired of seeing the lines in his face carved deeper and deeper with each setback. She wants to protect him, to curl her body between his and the cruelties of the world, her heart between his and any hurt.

(She is so tired of being alone. So tired of tossing sleeplessly until she has to get up to devour more books that contain no characters even half as intriguing as Rumplestiltskin. She wants, more than anything, to be at his side always, not just for ephemeral moments in between farewells.)

He says something about not changing (as if that doesn’t warm her heart, to know that he will _always_ look at her in this way, so struck and wondering and dazed) and then mentions kissing (as if he read her mind, or more likely, her open face tilted so close to his) and Belle takes it as invitation.

Only…he doesn’t kiss back.

“Rumplestiltskin?”

Then he pushes her back. Distancing. Drawing away. Shutting her out, and the haven of her apartment that cozily enclosed them both becomes a sterile, lonely place yet again, as if his magic has erased the past few moments.

“This is me, Belle,” he says, cold, aloof (unreachable). “This is who I am. I’m not going to change, I’m not going to turn into a handsome prince, I’m not going to suddenly have hands washed clean of the blood I’ve shed.”

Belle’s heart tightens in her chest (because still, even now after months, he doesn’t believe her). “I know that,” she says insistently (wishing she could use magic too if only to conjure up a truth potion; perhaps he would believe magic where he cannot believe her).

A spark of something in his eyes—irritation? Belle hopes she is mistaken even as she shrinks away from his disappointment (in _her_ , again, and for all she has never regretted loving Rumplestiltskin, she would take back their first kiss in a heartbeat if only it would mean that he could separate the _change_ he so fears from _her_ ).

“Do you know what I would have turned into if I’d let you kiss me, there by the spinning wheel?” he asks her. 

She hasn’t smiled at him. She hasn’t done anything to earn this secret he guards above all others.

All Belle can hear, for an instant, is the rushing of blood in her ears. The pounding of her heart. The catch in the back of his throat as he pushes through his own terror to give her a truth (voluntarily, of his own free will, uncoerced and unpaid for).

“I would have turned into an ordinary man—a less than ordinary man. A cripple, a poor spinner with a lame leg, too afraid to speak without stuttering. A coward who flinched away from every touch and groveled before soldiers and scrounged in dirt to make enough of a living that my boy could eat one meal a day.”

He speaks as if she will be repulsed (as if she will hate him as much as he hates himself). His voice starts strong and dwindles into a shadow (as if she will shame him as greatly as he still feels ashamed of that man he can’t escape). He paints her a picture of another facet of himself, and Belle feels so angry at him. Angry that he cannot see and so very, very sad on his behalf, because he will never be able to see himself the way she sees him.

She sees a man dressed in patched and homespun clothes, leaning on a staff, gentle and quiet and so smart behind a façade erected to protect him from the harsh world. A spinner who spins and spins and spins all for love of a boy at his knee and a future he cannot see. A husband abandoned, a father determined, a man she thinks she could have loved even then (would _gladly_ have loved), and she clutches this imaginary scenario close to treasure later when he is busy and she is alone: this image of her traveling through his town or running from her arranged marriage or simply striking out on her own, and meeting a poor, brave spinner with his son so devoted at his heels. She loves him already, even just picturing him, a sharp man beaten down but still fighting and trying, sarcastic asides muttered to only himself, and she imagines that he would have stared at her in the same way as the Dark One if she laughed _with_ him.

“That’s who I am, Belle,” he whispers (the man beneath the Dark One, the spinner and the deal-maker, all the layers together comprising the man she loves), “underneath it all, and I don’t…you can’t love me.”

“Can’t I?” Belle asks as images and stories dance in her head (all of them beautiful, all of them difficult, all of them ending with her and Rumplestiltskin together; and in all of them, he sees her as something above him, as someone who can never love him). 

“Belle…”

“Rumplestiltskin,” she says, and dares to touch him, to ground herself to his reality (to _this_ version of her True Love). She’s encouraged when his hands come up to wrap around her wrists, clutching her close though she thinks he probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. “I know who you are. You’re Rumplestiltskin—Dark One and spinner and father and deal-maker and True Love. I loved you when you were my master in a dark castle. I loved you when you were a savior letting me go free. I loved you when you were the Dark One, sending me away and calling down wraiths to wreak vengeance you’d promised you wouldn’t. I loved you when you were a stranger who wept when you saw me and trembled when you hugged me. I loved you when you were good and selfless, giving me a library and telling me goodbye. And I love you now, when you’re an extraordinary man who has deluded himself into thinking he is unworthy of anything good. I love you, Rumplestiltskin.” She takes a deep breath—and is brave (as brave as he believes her to be): “Do you love me?”

His silence is everything she has ever feared from him. 

Nothing.

Nothing.

She’s only a girl, pitiful and fearful and more comfortable dreaming big dreams than ever actually fulfilling any of them. She’s quiet and odd and lives more in stories than reality. Magic eludes her and power is of no interest to her, and how could he ever possibly find enough in her to catch his attention for more than a few moments at a—

“Oh, yes,” he whispers, so fervent, so adamant that Belle nearly weeps. His spinner hands reach out to her, pull her close, draw gold along her veins, pull heated shudders through her frame. His clever lips are warm and soft and inviting, tempting, binding, weaving her into his life. “How could I not love you?” he asks between kisses she draws out longer and longer. “You’re light and beauty and goodness and… _everything_. Of course I love you.”

She smiles against his lips, then, because he thinks himself a monster and calls himself evil and hides his own darkness, but of course he loves what he sees as light and goodness. Her Rumplestiltskin, so clever, so devoted, so _blind_.

He's above her, around her, swallowing her up, everywhere she looks and smells and tastes, his voice a tickle against her ear, and she will never forget this. Never be able to sit on this couch and think of anything else but _this_ moment.

But he’s been brave and given back to her even without one of the smiles he’s promised to pay for, so she gives back to him too. 

“But what if I’m not all those things?” she asks him through the haze he’s left her in. “What if I’m…what if _I’m_ ordinary and unworthy?”

It hurts to ask. To put the words into the open. (Terrifying to wonder if he will see it now that she has drawn attention to her mundanity.)

His frown is fierce, his touch so gentle. “Never!” he insists (a promise that sinks like magic, like gold, like love, all through her).

She smiles (hopes he doesn’t think of it as payment, but as love). “Now ask me.”

He hesitates. A pause that drags on for a long moment (but he doesn’t draw away, his body a welcome weight over hers, protective and enveloping and _safe_ ) before he finally says, “What if I’m ordinary and unworthy?”

“Never!” she promises him, then smiles again and pulls him back to her and imagines, instead of a different past, a future so possible, so close, she can all but reach out and grab hold of it. Quiet evenings spent cozy together, full of confided secrets and eased burdens and stroking caresses, heated kisses, a night that ends in the bedroom rather than a couch. Evenings interrupted, occasionally, by a boy with Rumplestiltskin’s amber eyes and agile fingers and forgiveness in his heart. 

Their kisses go on and on and on while Belle lets happiness fill her from the inside out, then gradually slow and quiet and calm, tiny plucking kisses to remind the other they are there, this is real, True Love cannot be destroyed (not so long as they both choose it, and he _has_ chosen her, deal or no, and she _does_ choose him, no matter how hard this may sometimes be). 

Eventually, they end up wrapped around each other, his arms tight enough to keep her from falling off the edge of the couch, her hands learning the shape of his fingers, his shoulders, his jaw (her heart relearning his, so open and bright and hopeful). 

“I’m not very brave,” she whispers into the golden darkness. She half-hopes he’s asleep already, that he will miss this confession wrung from deep inside her. (She _wants_ to be brave, to be a hero like in the stories, and he thinks she is one, and maybe that’s why he’s so afraid of her, because all heroes slay monsters and vanquish beasts. But he isn’t a monster and she isn’t brave and if he can tell her about his ordinary past, she can confide her even more ordinary truth.)

But he is awake. Awake enough to look down at her as if she has started speaking gibberish. (His disbelief warms her even as she forces herself not to take the escape route.)

“I’m not,” she says, “not really. And if you don’t believe me, well then, now you know what I feel like when you say no one can love you.”

He laughs (all the lines in his face vanish, leaving him looking so young, so unburdened, so _happy_ ) and the sound is so beautiful that Belle kisses him to taste it, and after that, sleep is impossible and making it to the bedroom hardly occurs to her until far, far later.


	4. Chapter 4

She opens her apartment door to his knock and finds him smirking at her, so confident and easy with an invitation inside that she throws her arms around him even before she realizes he’s brought her another gift. Behind him, the tallest man she’s ever seen maneuvers first a table inside her small apartment, then two matching chairs. Rumplestiltskin directs their placement for the man (Dove, he calls him, and the man nods in respect to Rumplestiltskin, making Belle smile to know she is _not_ the only one who sees more than the legend), but as soon as they are alone, he turns to her.

“Where do you want them?” he asks. 

“What…” Belle looks from him to the new furniture and back again. “What are these for?”

“You can’t always eat on the couch,” he says with a flick of his fingers (even as his eyes slide away from hers, more nervous than he wants her to see; just like before, in their old land, when every gift was accompanied by a casual excuse). “You’ll chip another teacup.”

Belle laughs. “I only chipped that one because _someone_ thought he was funny.”

“Well,” he looks up at her from under his lashes, “you laughed.”

She shrugs, purposely casual. “It _was_ funny. And,” she adds, “you weren’t who I thought you were.”

“And now?” She can see him holding his breath, so she lets her hand drift over his as she moves to the table.

“You’re exactly who I think you are,” she says, “which makes me want to know every last part of you. So…”

His eyes have fallen back to his hand, one on his cane, the other fidgeting nervously, so he’s startled when she tugs his sleeve and directs him to sit in one of the chairs. “What…?”

“I think here is perfect,” she says, “but let’s test it.”

He moves as if to push the other chair out, but Belle ignores it in favor of perching on the edge of the table, so close to him that her bare leg brushes his arm. Rumplestiltskin blinks and blinks again as she looks down at him. She has to bite her lip to keep from smiling too widely as she waits for him to catch up to the memories dancing in her head. 

The appearance of his smile is slow, and so sweet she bites her lip for a different reason now. His hand rests, daringly, on her knee as he turns to her, and this is what she didn’t even know she wanted, back then, and exactly what she _knows_ she wants this time.

“My beautiful Belle,” he murmurs, almost to himself, and Belle loves him so much she almost feels that she will burst into a thousand pieces trying to contain it all.

Gifts are hard to accept from him, sometimes, because he thinks they are prices paid to keep her there, to earn her love (to make up for the unworthiness he sees in himself). But this gift is simply because he wants to, so she is happy to accept it.

“And here I thought two chairs might be too few,” he finally says with a sly smile as his fingers draw patterns over her knee.

Belle shivers and draws her own hand down the side of his face. “This is perfect,” she whispers, and kisses his smile.

* * *

He brings her dinner and a gift wrapped in a ribbon of blue and gold, and his sly secretiveness steals away her appetite until she can hardly think of anything but what might be in that box. It’s long and so much bigger than the box she wasn’t even aware she was hoping for until now, but…but he’s always been so good at surprising her, so maybe there is a smaller box inside this bigger one, and inside that smaller box, perhaps there is an endless future wrapped in a ring of gold. (She _hopes_ there is; she’s had her taste of innocence and her offerings of the world and she no longer feels like a kept woman and she _misses_ Rumplestiltskin.)

Whatever this gift is, it’s big. It’s important. It’s something special enough to make Rumplestiltskin’s eyes gleam and his hands shake. She cannot tell if he is more excited or terrified, and as much as she wants to rip the box open, she cannot deny the flutters of fear in the pit of her stomach.

They’ve been doing so good. They’ve come so far from that first hamburger date when he could not believe she wanted him and she could not believe she deserved him. She doesn’t want anything to ruin this now, to destroy the progress they’ve made (to delay where she hopes this is going, when she can go back to his house and they can be together in all things).

“Here,” he finally says, “if you’ll have it.”

Desperate for a reminder that they’ve survived far more than just a tiny box, Belle makes herself laugh and curtsy, feels something ease inside her when he recognizes the moment and bows back to her.

But then there’s nothing to do but untie the ribbon and open the box (she cannot help but think of a nightmare with another gift, all silver sparkles and heavy weight around her neck; a nightmare of fear and violence and that change that scares him so badly). She draws it out (this instant when there could be _anything_ wrapped so carefully), but he urges her on and the lid falls away and it’s his name staring back at her.

Not his name in a band of gold. Not a future with him wrapped in a proposal and a pretty ring.

It’s a dagger, all sinuous lines and sharp edges and dark imprints, branded with the name she loves above all others.

It’s more Rumplestiltskin than a ring would have been, she thinks, and she’s not surprised that she doesn’t understand what it means. 

Despite her nervousness, Belle can’t help but trace the letters branded on the metal, warmer than it seems it should be. Can’t help but wait for Rumplestiltskin to explain why this matters so much to him.

And he does. He explains in the form of a story (in yet more trust gifted to her, the story of how the spinner became the Dark One, and Belle is not surprised in the least to know it all hinges, once more, ever and always, on _Baelfire_ ). He tells of a father and a war and a desperate soul that took advantage of that spinner and his son. He tells of a curse and magic and salvation and suddenly Belle knows why he sees magic as desirable, as necessary, as everything he needs to fill in what he sees himself as lacking.

Magic saved his son. Power kept his son alive. His curse is what bought them more time together (before it ripped them apart, but Belle doesn’t believe Rumplestiltskin sees the story that way; he thinks that it is his own perceived weakness that separated them, while magic has only saved and connected and will one day reunite).

But gradually, as the story slowly seeps in, Belle reads between the lines and realizes exactly what this dagger does. “Whoever holds it controls the Dark One,” he said. “Whoever kills the Dark One with it takes the power as their own.”

And he’s giving it to _her_.

“I’m giving it to you because it’s yours,” he says, so earnest, so open, so brave (so _wrong_ ). “Yours and Bae’s. Everything that I am…is yours.”

Everything in Belle recoils. 

“No,” she says. There’s bile rising in her throat and shudders ripping through her soul and she just barely restrains herself from scrambling as far away from the dagger as she can get. Instead, she just pushes it (carefully, _oh_ so carefully) back toward him (this is a gift she cannot, she can _never_ , accept). 

He stares at her, uncomprehending. _Hurt_.

“Your heart, I will take,” she tries to explain with an attempt at a smile. “Not literally, though, Rumplestiltskin, just metaphorically. But I’ll only take it because I’ve given you _mine_. But this…” She can’t help but shudder again, afraid to even touch the dagger in case it affects his soul in a completely unfair, _unnatural_ way. “This is your free will. This is your power of choice, your individuality. And I wouldn’t take that from you anymore than you’d put me in chains.”

His smile calms her fear (that he wouldn’t understand her; that he would feel scorned). “And you wonder why I love you?” he asks. “Belle, anyone else would have taken this without a second thought.”

“This…” She can’t help but frown. “This was a test then?”

She thinks of asking him for hamburgers and then waiting for him. She thinks of giving him a book about sandwiches and then waiting for him to come back for each one. She thinks of all the tiny tests she has posed and evidences she has looked for, and wonders why they each find it so hard to give into what should be the easiest thing in their lives.

“No. It...never even occurred to me that you wouldn’t take it.”

And it didn’t. She sees the truth of it in how wide his eyes are, large and swallowing up his face as he stares at her as if he’s never seen anything like her. 

A smile bursts free of hers in answer to that look (to his honesty; to his understanding of why she cannot take his choices from him just as he has never taken hers away, from their first meeting waiting to hear her accept his deal of her own free will). “Well,” she confides in him (a secret in return for the trust he has given her in return for her smiles in return for his humor in return for her presence in return for his invitation and so on and so on, an endless loop she will never break). “The next gift you offer me in a small box, I’ll accept.”

“Careful, dearest,” he says as he pulls her close, wraps her even closer when she steps nearer of her own accord. “Don’t make rash promises.”

And this, here, is the opening she’s been waiting for. An opportunity she cannot let herself deny. He’s warm and solid and he holds her as if he never wants to let go and looks at her as if he is content here (the town line set aside for this moment, his son wrapped in his endless patience), and these things make her brave.

“Is that what you did?” she asks him after a slight delay. 

He pretends not to understand her, but Belle shrugs it away. A little distance is necessary now to watch him (to convince herself she is not hurt by this, whatever his answer is).

“Did you make a deal with someone?” she finally asks him straight out. “You’d tell me a secret every time I…what? Smiled?”

“Only a certain smile,” he says, and something in Belle collapses inward. 

She knew it. Of course she knew it. She’s known it for weeks now. But…but maybe somewhere deep inside, she’d hoped anyway. Hoped that he’d chosen her. That he wanted her. That he decided of his own accord to trust her. 

But he didn’t. Instead, he gave his free will over to someone else, signed it away in some verbal contract, and only because of his own honor (the integrity he built and formed and wrapped around his regrets concerning his son) has he ever confided anything in her.

“You made a deal,” she says so that he won’t. “With who? Was it David? Ruby? My father? Were they…were they trying to make sure you didn’t hurt me, or…” She won’t cry. She refuses to. She’s not angry with him for this deal (she knows why he needed it to dust off his neglected bravery), but it hurts in a way she hadn’t really anticipated. “I thought…I thought you were telling me because you trusted me.”

She wishes the words back as soon as they are out. Once again, she sounds too young. Too naïve. Too sheltered and idealistic and _boring_ for him to ever waste his time on. She wishes she were really as brave and bold and heroic and _certain_ as he thinks her to be.

“Belle, do you want to know who I made the deal with?” When she dares to look at him, he’s smiling (not disappointed; not bored; not scornful; _smiling_ , at _her_ , closer than she thought he was). With a flourish of his hand more familiar to her than her own reflection, he gestures to himself. “Me,” he tells her. “I made a deal with _myself_ —one of my secrets for every special smile you give me.”

She scarcely has time to wonder what he considers her _special smile_ (to wonder how many smiles he thinks she has) before he’s looking away and adding, “Honesty, _change_ , trust…they’re not the best colors on me. But deals are the one thing I know, and keeping deals the one thing I can do. I didn’t want to lose you, Belle”—her breath catches in her throat—“and I wanted you to know my secrets even when I thought they would make you leave”—her veins are aflame with molten gold and the blue at the heart of the flame—“In case the dagger didn’t give it away, I _do_ trust you.”

It's _hard_ loving Rumplestiltskin. Wrestling with darkness and centuries of history and curses and magic and insecurities. Forever reaching out when he turns away. Constantly reminding him of something she’s already promised. Always hoping he will not give up on her or see past the halo he’s given her or see _only_ the pedestal he’s placed her on. It’s hard and sometimes it seems hopeless and occasionally she has contemplated letting it all go.

But most of the time… _oh,_ most of the time, it’s so _easy_ to love him. To look at his golden eyes and see his fidgeting hands and watch the grace he displays in any and every form. To hear his voice and the way he says her name (“Belle,” he says as if on cue, so dazed and awed and _hopeful_ ) and the way he speaks of her. To feel his heart racing and his shoulders shaking and his legs trembling, but to sense the strength beneath it all. 

Her hand drifts up, reaches forward, caresses his cheek—he’s real. He’s here. He really does love her and trust her and he’s managed (despite all the terrible history he’s confided in her) to _hope_ for her. For _them_.

“I…I trust you too, Rumplestiltskin. With everything I am.”

And she does. She _chooses_ to. Because he’s worth it. Because _this_ is worth it. Because he makes her brave and she makes him hope and there is no greater, more potent combination than that.

She’s in love with the deal-maker, but every deal he has ever made concerning her has only brought them together. This one will be no different.

* * *

She calls him during breakfast and brings him lunches to his shops and they take long walks together in the evening, and it still feels like too little every time he walks her to the door of her apartment and turns away to leave her. Until now, Belle has been content enough not to shake things up, but now… Oh, now she knows that he _wants_ her to have his secrets. That he _wants_ her to be a part of every bit of his life. That he wants it enough to make his own deal with himself (when he above all does not trust himself). 

So she brings breakfast to his house instead of just calling him. For a few moments, while the pancakes turn from sludge to golden food, she’s nervous (maybe he likes his space and his routines; he’s been alone so long, after all, and it’s probably hard for him to adjust to another person in his place), but then he comes into the kitchen and smiles to see her there and hugs her back and Belle isn’t scared anymore. 

In fact, for the first time, she is completely and totally brave (as brave as he’s always seen her to be). Brave enough to accept when he (so courageously, so boldly) invites her back into his home (or is it really bravery if that’s exactly what she’s been hoping he’d do?). Brave enough to sit close while he eats her burned pancakes without complaint. Brave enough to tell him about her clumsy way of trying to pay him back for his secrets with her own.

And brave enough, in the end, to propose a new deal. 

“I want to sell my secrets,” she says, but that’s not quite right, is it? “Or rather, instead of selling our secrets, couldn’t we make a deal that we…we won’t keep secrets from each other? We could exchange them. Share—”

“Share everything,” he finishes for her, and any other day, Belle would be afraid to look at him. Today, though, she looks without even hesitating, searches his reaction and finds only openness.

“Is it a deal you would make?” She tries very hard not to appear too eager, but it’s hard when this is everything she’s ever wanted.

“You must have heard that I never turn down deals,” he says, and she tries to focus on his words even though he draws so close to her, his nose caressing her cheek, his lips a hair’s breadth from hers. 

“And you never break your deals,” she manages before dropping her own lips to his cheek, a seal on their deal. “So, do you have any more secrets?”

He smells of magic. Of straw and gold and tea and pancakes and lightning, a mixture so intoxicating she sways in her chair, falling against him (he caught her once before, when she fell, all strength and shock and a willingness to try for _her_ , and no one else has ever in her life thought her worthy of altering or changing or bending _for_ ; only him, which makes her _not_ want him to change at all).  
  
“Many,” he says, “but we have time for them all. Later.”

“Later.” She likes the sound of that, likes it even more when he tugs her into his lap (why was she in the chair anyway when it’s easier to fall into him if she perches on the table?) and seals his mouth over hers. Belle slides her fingers through his hair (soft as he doesn’t think he is), leans into his embrace (strong as he imagines he isn’t), melts into his kiss (as valuable as he considers her). 

This is where she belongs. Not because she was told it is. Not because it was decided for her. Not because of any deal or promise or agreement or tradition or expectation. 

It’s where she belongs because she has decided it. Because she has chosen it. Because she _wants_ it, and because he is worth everything she could ever risk for him.

“I’ll pack tonight,” she whispers between kisses, a vision of the future to tide him (and her) over until she can return. “I’ll move in tomorrow.”

“My darling Belle,” he breathes into her mouth, and Belle wonders, if a kiss can conquer a curse and build trust, what she is being transformed into. She wonders if maybe Rumplestiltskin will pull back from this kiss and see all her dross being peeled away to reveal the gold he always saw beneath. It worked on him, after all—she’s never seen him so clearly, never been so struck by his beauty as when she blinks her eyes clear of his kiss and sees his open, unabashed smile.

“Rumple,” she names him ( _hers_ ), and he smiles wider, and for the smile, she gladly pays him with another kiss.

* * *

With every secret shared, Rumplestiltskin shows her his trust. Proves it in ways that still, sometimes, scare her more than she can admit, a daunting offering to live up to. But here, stepping inside his house (their _home_ ) and knowing she is here to stay, it is just as transforming, just as powerful as it was the first time in another world. He welcomes her in with a smile and a hug and his lips and _trust_.

All the people in his life who have left him (more than she yet knows, she is sure), but he ushers her back inside his heart and his hands don’t shake, his mouth doesn’t tremble—he is not afraid. 

He trusts her.

Living here, amidst the treasures of two worlds and multiple lifetimes, Belle is entranced by the mixture of familiar and strange. The comfort of the way he takes his tea and cradles his hand around the warmth of the cup and stares into the shimmering ripples whenever he wishes to avoid meeting her gaze. The newness, still, of going up to bed together, slipping beneath the blankets and curling close to his expansive warmth and discovering new heights and secrets and quiet peace with him (a world all their own, private and sacred and so cozy that even _Baelfire_ can do no more than make him look vaguely worried until she chases that fear away with conjured hope).

This is everything she’s ever wanted. A library full of books, a way to connect to fellow readers, a place for herself; and a home with her True Love, a haven behind high walls where he feels safe enough to let his armor fall away and his masks dissolve and his heart come out from hiding. It’s _more_ than she thought to expect this soon, because he trusts her in return. He lets her help him in his quest (not a burden or a judge or a distraction; she is his _partner_ ), gives her books to read that he doesn’t have time to peruse, allows her to check the work he cobbles together from a mishmash of dozens of different types of magic. 

And of course, her most important task, self-appointed: she is there to encourage him when he’s feeling defeated and resigned and hopeless. She paints pictures of a future he cannot see, can’t dare envision on his own; she tells stories of what will be, what could be, what they can _make_ happen, together, if they keep trying and trusting and hoping.

And finally, one day, he skips into the kitchen, his smile wider than she’s ever seen it, his eyes gleaming so brightly that her breath catches in the back of her throat (if she’d been holding her cup, she would have dropped it and chipped another one; or perhaps shattered it completely, a picture of everything they’ve worked their way through to reach this place). 

“I’ve done it, Belle!” he says, and Belle has never thought his smug cunning, his gleeful triumph, more fitting or more mesmerizing.

“Your son,” she whispers. “You…”

“Yes.” He steps into her without the least sign of hesitation, his arms pulling her so close that her toes leave the ground even as she soaks in the feel of his smile against her throat. “I found a way across the town line.”

“You can finally see Baelfire again.”

“Bae,” he whispers into the cloak of her hair. There is such a note of longing there, a wistfulness and a sorrow and a hope and a terror, that Belle has to wrap him closer, hold him tighter, _hope_ for his sake with everything she is that this does not turn out badly. “My boy.”

Words burn on her tongue like fire. _Take me with you_ , but how can she say that when this is _his_ quest? _Let me stand beside you_ , but why would he want her barging in on this reunion that is his very reason for being? _Don’t forget me_ , but that is the most selfish thing of all to ask, because Baelfire is his happy ending and she cannot (she _will_ not) interfere with that.

“I’m so happy for you,” she finally says. Her fingers dart up, of their own accord, to trace the look of joy on his face, to memorize the texture and the shape and the delight of it (to store it away so that she can give it back to him when fear and grief and defeat creep back in).

And she steps back. She lets go. 

(Baelfire is his happy ending, but Rumplestiltskin is hers and his happiness is hers, so in the end, perhaps this is just as much her quest as it is his.)

Rumplestiltskin lets her go, but he keeps hold of her hand, his grip tight and enduring (she knows he will never let go unless she asks it of him), his smile still inviting her to share in his happiness.

(And maybe, she dares to think, to believe, she is as much a part of his happy ending as his son is.)

* * *

“One final thing before I can go,” he tells her in a whisper. She hasn’t smiled yet and they are bound by the strictures of a new deal, but nonetheless, she feels herself taken back to the days when every conversation, every time they spent any amount of time together at all, he would lean in and tell her something new about himself (unwrap more layers of the mystery she hopes she never solves).

She shudders to see him retrieve the dagger, and cannot help looking behind her to make sure the shades are drawn over his shop door. “Are you taking it with you?”

“No.” Rumplestiltskin’s eyes are heavy-lidded as he regards the sinuous knife. “The last time… When Bae… If he sees this on me, he will think that I haven’t…that I still…”

Belle lays her hand over his atop the dagger, and feels something spark and melt and transmogrify into sun-like radiance when he doesn’t even flinch (doesn’t tighten his grip on the knife to hide it from her). “We’ll hide it,” she offers quietly. “So that no one can find it. And then, when you’ve apologized to Baelfire, you can prove to him that it means nothing compared to him.”

“We,” he repeats, a murmur she could miss if she weren’t so used to the subtleties where her True Love is concerned.

“I’m sorry,” she begins, her hand falling away, but he catches it up and brings it back to rest over his branded name.

“No,” he says. “Belle, please, that’s what I want. I was hoping that you would help me. We could hide it together. I have a hiding place I don’t believe anyone will guess, but it might put you in danger.”

Belle rolls her eyes. “If anyone’s looking for the dagger, they’ll guess that I might know something anyway.” Suddenly, she looks up at him, bites her lip, then adds, “We could use that, you know. Plant false clues in the library, lead them to places where, if they followed them, it’d be easy for us to tell what they were after. It would give us time to either stop them or move the dagger.”

This time, it is his hand that rises, his fingers that play over her face, as if she is more important than the chains of his soul on the counter, than the magic running through his lightning-edged veins, than the heart beating in his chest to the rhythm of a son Belle hopes to one day meet. 

“Thank you,” he says. Just that, but it is accompanied by the clasp of his hand pulling her into him and a kiss dropped so lightly, so sweetly, on her lips (and once that kiss would have been the mark of a penitent looking for absolution; now it is confident and admiring and love itself, the token of a lover rather than a sinner).

“Where shall we lead your enemies astray?” she asks with a mischievous smile (her heart swelling, her shoulders drawing straight, her spine stiffening, to live up to his faith in her). “You don’t have to tell me where you’re hiding it, but we should lead them far away from—”

“The clocktower,” he answers. There is no fear in his eyes at all. “On one of the hands of the clock everyone sees every day.”

“Hidden in plain sight.” Belle smiles, sly and gleeful and everything she has learned from him. “The best hiding place of all.”

He looks up at her (at the strange, intimate tone of her voice), this man hidden beneath the monster they all talk of, worlds upon worlds, in whispers and rumors and campfire tales. His heart is there, shining through his eyes, radiating from every line of his body, every tentative hesitation and cruel word, hidden in plain sight (overlooked and doubted and unseen). 

And perhaps, she thinks, she isn’t ordinary after all. Perhaps she is more than she ever thought, more akin to what he sees when he looks at her than what she sees in her own reflection. Because she sees him. She’s always seen him. The person beneath the mask. The man beneath the monster. The love beneath the fear. The hurt beneath the anger. 

The love beneath the distance.

She gifts him a smile (one he doesn’t have to pay for, freely offered and freely granted and freely formed), and moves to stand at his side.

Together, they draw a map. Together, they plant clues and laugh to think of enemies toiling to dig holes in empty ground. Together, they protect their future and dream of a happy ending.

* * *

The town line is glaring and bright against the dark night. Rumplestiltskin holds his son’s shawl in his hands and stares at the world outside of magic and holds a shimmering potion in his pocket—and he has not moved since they got here. Belle scoots a little closer to him, patient, watchful (wondering if he needs space or encouragement; time or motivation).

“Rumple,” she finally whispers, so quietly he can ignore it if he wishes. Instead, he turns to her as if he’s been waiting for some sign that she would welcome him. As if he’s been afraid to let her see what has him trapped here, but also hopeful that she would look on her own.

“I don’t…I don’t think I can do this,” he says, a broken confession that falls, twisted and raw, between them. 

She’s seen him terrified before. When she followed him from room to room in the Dark Castle and smiled at him and reached to touch him. When she kissed him and then crowed that it was working. When he saw her again, alive and amnesiac, asking for his protection. When she told him she remembered, and when she accused him of cowardice, and when she called him back to her in her library. Every time she comes to him or trusts him or _loves_ him (her love is terrifying to him, but that’s all right because Belle, too, has lost much in her life and knows just what it would mean to his chipped and shattered and fractured heart to lose yet one more thing he’s loved), it scares him. 

But she has never seen him _this_ scared. He is beyond shaking hands and a lump in his throat, moved onward to sheer, paralyzing fright. 

“We just have to make sure the potion will work,” she tries to say, but he’s already shaking his head, so tremulous, so timid, that Belle thinks she is finally seeing the poor spinner, the helpless father, that he sees in himself (she wonders that he cannot see the man who burned down a castle and strode into flames and confronted the most powerful being in their world with nothing more than love and desperation as his shield). 

“No, I…” He tries for some composure. “The potion will work. It’s…it’s Bae. I can’t…I can’t…”

“You can.” Scooting even closer, she sets her shoulder beside his, support he can lean against, and rests her head on his shoulder. “You will. You’ll get past the town line with all your memories, and you’ll find your son. And maybe he will be afraid to see you, maybe he will be angry at past hurts, but you’ll tell him that you’re sorry and you’ll tell him about three centuries lived in his name and countless worlds you’ve seen on his behalf and all the fairy tales you have crafted for his sake. You’ll show him all the love you hold inside you, and he will see it. Oh, Rumple, he won’t be able to _miss_ it. And he’ll remember the papa who held him when he was afraid and told him stories until he fell asleep and spun the most beautiful thread to feed him. He'll remember that he has the best papa and—”

“No. I’m _not_ a good father. I…I didn’t want to leave him fatherless on the battlefield, but a seer said I would, so I…” His hand spasms against his leg, knocking against his cane, and Belle’s stomach tightens into a knot. “But if I’d just fought, if I’d been _brave_ , then he would have grown up with a mother and the story of a hero father—instead of a coward who couldn’t help but let him down in every way.”

“Rumple—”

“I can’t be a good father,” he blurts, desperate and grasping for her. She goes willingly (grateful and elated that he _knows_ , now, that he _can_ reach for her and she will come), sliding awkwardly into his lap, the shawl crushed between them. “I don’t know how to be. All I can do is repeat the sins of the past.”

“You would never leave him again,” she says fiercely, almost ready to shake him.

Rumplestiltskin stares at her, and suddenly, in some way she can’t quite define, he looks so _young_. Like a little boy sitting shy and abandoned and lonely in front of her. 

“I’m just like my father,” he whispers. 

Belle stills.

“He abandoned me. That’s the only legacy I have to pass on. A father too concerned with his own selfish wishes to put his child first. A father who cannot leave the world he loves behind for his son. My father wasn’t…he wasn’t a good man, but I _loved_ him, Belle, and it didn’t matter. I took him to another world so we could start over again—just like Bae wanted to do for me—but he… All I could do was hold him back, so he sent me away. Banished me so that he could live free. And for all that I was so determined not to do that to Bae…that’s exactly what I did, in the end. He wanted a new world, a new start, but I wasn’t even as brave as my father, couldn’t even go through the portal, and…and I gave him up for my own selfish power. If I…if I find Bae again, how can I possibly ask him to forgive _me_ when I haven’t forgiven Papa?”

“Did your father search for you?” Belle finally asks. Her throat is dry, her tongue heavy, her heartbeat a thundering in her ears, but that can wait for later (she can think, later, when she is alone, on just how long Rumplestiltskin has felt betrayed and abandoned; she can think, later, on how much courage it must take him not to expect the same of her when it is all he has ever known). “Did he find you?”

“Once,” he whispers. “He came to try to take Bae away. He knew that I could only ever let him down. And he was right.”

“No. No, he wasn’t. Rumplestiltskin, look at me.” She cups his face in her hands and brings him close, so close they exchange breath (as they do hearts and secrets and dreams), rests her forehead against his and tries to _will_ her belief and her love and her hope into him. “You are _not_ your father. And I’m so sorry that he did that to you, that he said terrible things to you, but if he was such a terrible father, then of course he wouldn’t know a good one when he saw one. Or more likely, he _did_ recognize a good one, and he couldn’t bear to let that stand, not when it only proved how awful _he_ was.”

“But—”

“No,” she says again. She was never tempted, not for a moment, when he offered her the dagger. But now, for just an instant, she wonders if speaking these words while her hand is draped alongside his over the knife would imprint this truth on his heart. “You regretted what you did instantly. You’ve done nothing but try to fix that mistake.”

“But I can’t!”

“Yes, you can. Rumple, when Regina had me locked away, she told me that you knew. She said that you simply chose not to come for me. That you didn’t care enough to rescue me.”

“ _Belle_ —”

“I never believed her. Not once. Not ever. I know you, Rumplestiltskin, and I know that you love with everything you are. You love in a way I never knew anyone could. You love absolutely and completely and utterly, and you would do anything, would give up everything, for the ones you love.”

“For you,” he whispers. “For Bae.”

“You are not your father,” she breathes into his mouth, pieces of truth to swirl there into his soul. “You are _Bae’s_ papa, and you are going to find him and remind him that you love him. You won’t leave him fatherless ever again.”

“Belle—” His kiss is messy and awkward, wet and heavy and ending up half across her cheek before she tilted her head to meet his lips. He clutches at her as if he could merge her inside him, and Belle would let him, would gladly infuse him with all her love for him and belief in him.

She winds her arms around his neck and threads her fingers through his hair and blankets him in every way she can, hoping her heart is strong enough to be the thick walls and high ramparts and deep moat he needs for protection from a cruel world. She slants her mouth across his and shares heat and hope and desire and faith until he is strong enough to break away a hair’s breadth.

“Come with me.”

At first, she’s not sure if she’s the one who said the words (she can’t deny that she’s afraid, _so_ afraid, of what Bae’s reaction will do to her fragile love). Then she thinks she imagined them, the words she most wants to hear, spoken in that broken accent, that shuddering voice, words that vibrate against her chin as he drops kisses over her flushed skin.

“Come with me,” he says again. A plea. An invitation. A proposal. 

Everything she wants. 

Adventure and the world and a mystery at her side.

She’s not in his way. She’s not interfering. She’s _part_ of his quest.

“Anywhere,” she promises him. “Everywhere. I’ll stay with you no matter what.”

“Forever?” he breathes against her throat, and Belle’s entire body shudders around him.  
  
“Forever,” she vows.

She sees the truth when he cannot. Hopes for what he dares not. Believes what he’s too afraid to imagine. She sees what is hidden from him.

And in return, he gives her everything she’s ever wanted. Offers her a heart bruised and battered and broken, and so very, very beautiful (because of it; despite it; amidst it). Loves her in a way she’s never been loved before and will never be loved again.

Loving him, Belle thinks, is the best choice she’s ever made.

* * *

Bae’s shawl (golden as her dress once was) hangs around Rumplestiltskin’s neck. The rose Rumplestiltskin once gave her with a courtly bow and an offered choice ( _If you’ll have it_ ) is pinned to her jacket. The potion imbued through them both shimmers sapphire and diamond as they drive across the town line.

“Belle?” he asks, his hand offered between them.

“Rumplestiltskin,” she says back, and curls her fingers around his. 

“We’re going to find my son,” he says, all purpose and resolve and courage. 

“I love you.” The words burst from her, a truth she cannot keep inside.  
  
His smile is sly and cunning and smug and everything she loves. He flicks the hand she holds in a familiar gesture, and suddenly she sees that there is a box there. A tiny box wrapped in a bow. Small, as if for a ring.

“Go on,” Rumplestiltskin says. “You’ve already promised to accept it.”

“Our deal,” she says, a smile peeking through the corners of her mouth. The box is solid, real (a dream come true). 

“And no one,” he says with a familiar trill, “no one breaks deals with me.”

There is a ring of golden thread in the box, beautiful and magical and _hers_. There is a man at her side, beautiful and magical and _hers_. There is a future ahead of them, beautiful and magical and _theirs_.

“Well?” Rumplestiltskin asks, as gleeful as he is tentative (a dichotomy she will never grow tired of). 

Belle thinks of all his insecurities and his past and his enemies and the women he has loved before and his fears and secrets. She thinks of Baelfire and the hardships that might be coming and the hurt Rumplestiltskin will doubtless feel when he’s face to face with his son again.

She thinks of a poor spinner imbued with courage he cannot see. A father whose desperation blinds him to truth. A Dark One with deals and honor and lines he will not cross. A deal-maker who saved everyone she loves and traded a heart for hers. A man whose monstrous deeds are underscored by heroic intentions. 

The ring slides onto her finger exactly as if it was always meant to be there.

“Yes,” she says (and it didn’t take any bravery at all because she isn’t afraid anymore, not of anything; she trusts him completely and absolutely). Then she weaves her ring-adorned fingers through his, basks in the light of his smile (of joy and delight shining there in exactly the same pattern as the one she memorized through touch), and dares to imagine their love will last forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for all the reviews and kudos! Hopefully this didn't disappoint or ruin 'Dealing' for anyone! (And oh, while trying to think of something precious for Belle to use as a talisman, I just couldn't stop cracking up at thinking of Gaston getting to be a part of their story there at the end, so...yeah, that's why he's her talisman. Hopefully it made someone else smile too.)


End file.
